An Imago of Rust and Crimson
by EarthScorpion
Summary: Brockton Bay. A slowly rotting, fog-wreathed city in a decaying world where things lurk in the shadows. And that's what I thought it was even before my powers opened my eyes. I wish I could ignore what I see. I wish I could forget. I wish I could escape. But I can't. The Other Place is always there. Thanks go to Revlid for editing.
1. Chrysalis 1-01

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Arc 1 – Chrysalis**

**Chapter 1.01**

Madness. It's a funny word, isn't it?

Well, no. Not really. It's not a laughing matter. Perhaps that's why we make jokes about it. It scares us. It scares us profoundly. Every last thing about us, our us-ness, is in our heads, and to have your head not working like it's meant to means – in a way – you're not really you. But you feel like you're you. So you're not you, and you are you, all at the same time. Can the 'you' you think you are be a different person from the 'you' everyone else thinks you are? Of course it can, but we don't like to think about that sort of thing. It calls into question who _you _are.

That's what scares us. The idea that our mind might not be our own, that we can be changed and tweaked by some chemicals going wrong. It's the sickness of our times; the thing that's taken the place of smallpox and cholera and gangrene. Perhaps it was inevitable. As soon as diseases became things which could be seen and cured, we had to find a new monster which couldn't be seen and couldn't be fought. What we're scared of, as people, as a society – it's pretty telling, isn't it? You can read a lot about us as a people from our fears.

Are we all just insects, blindly squirming through life? Will we all die tomorrow when an Endbringer shows up? Who's the person thinking this? Who's the person reading this? Hell, who's the person _writing _this?

And when you're talking about questions of identity, you can't help but bring up names. I used to wonder why superheroes and supervillains alike went around with their monikers. Most of them do it because it's something that's done, because they think it'll give them safety against someone who isn't trying that hard, because everyone else does it.

Some of them, of course, know why. Names have power. Names define the self. Names define how we're thought of.

Well, my name, from a certain point of view, is Taylor Hebert. And if you ask everyone else, I went mad.

* * *

…

* * *

The first sign that something strange was going on was at the school gates. I was always wary when approaching them, because that was a favoured place for certain people I really didn't want to see to lurk. I always tried to arrive in a crowd, or otherwise get in just before classes start.

I swallowed deeply. So, here it was. Another day of school. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

There was just one thing which was making me pause here. I had spent a lot of time hanging around the entrance to the school, and yesterday there hadn't been a fancy pair of wrought-iron gates. The school certainly didn't have the budget for that kind of thing. They looked like they belonged on some fancy private school, or an old churchyard, or something like that. And they clearly weren't something new. The paint had flaked off them almost entirely, exposing black iron flecked with rust.

I shivered, and looked up at the slate-grey sky. Could I have just missed the gates? In all the time I was here? It hardly seemed likely. But I ran my hand over the gates, feeling the cold metal under my hands, its roughness, and I was sure they were real. They didn't feel like they were some kind of fantasy. They were just… gates. Made of rusty iron.

I mean, technically it could have been some supervillain ploy, but I was fairly sure that there was no villain called 'Gatemaster' who went around installing gates in high schools. At the very least, he'd have hit the news. I'd probably have heard of him. Or her.

Maybe I could just… not go to school today. No. It wasn't the gates which were freaking me out. That was just a displacement activity. I had a real and pressing reason not to go to school, and it wasn't some silly iron gates I couldn't remember. Maybe they just hadn't registered, I thought to myself. After all, who really pays attention to gates? They'd just had them fitted over the winter holidays. The reasons why I might want to just skive off lay inside the building, not outside. No, I'd get in worse trouble if I didn't go in. My dad would find out, and I'd have to explain things to him – and I really didn't want to do that. And they'd just take it as a sign that they were winning. If I didn't stick it out, things would just get worse for me.

The unpleasant feeling of cold sweat beading against my forehead, I swallowed and darted through these strange gates. First day back after winter vacation, and I was already waiting with bated breath until spring break.

The corridors were so very lonely. I felt far away from everyone else in them, as if miles rather than feet separated me from them. It was if an unseen bubble was forming around me, people just drifting out of my way. Everyone else had others talking to them, people glad to see them again after the holidays. Not me. I mean, things hadn't been so bad just before the holidays, but it had been the loneliness then which had been getting to me, and it was the loneliness which got me now. Most of the others just ignored me. I didn't mind that so much. It's not like you expect a sweeping ovation when walking down the corridors. But there were a few people I knew, a few people I had used to know more closely, and at best their gazes swept over me, almost like they were ashamed to look at me.

Maybe I was just projecting, hoping that they were feeling ashamed. I'd like to think that would have felt ashamed if someone I had used to be on normal speaking terms with was now someone I treated like… well, like how I got treated.

But that was better than the looks the others gave me. No sign of _those _three, but some of their hangers-ons caught my eye as I made my way through the corridors, and in their eyes lurked a certain dark giggling malevolence which made me feel deeply worried.

Checking my watch, I saw that I had plenty of time before I had to get in, and it was a bad idea to arrive too early. I'd just end up sitting there with no one to talk to. I decided to go to the toilets. I had a book in my bag, so I could just read in there for a while.

The girl's toilets were a mess. Worse than usual, I 's a public school, so they're hardly the Hilton, but three of the lights in the ceiling were broken, and someone had scrawled all over the mirrors in lipstick. The term had only just started. We were probably going to get some kind of talk as a school about the need to 'treat school property properly'. That'd what we'd got the last time the bathrooms were vandalised in a major way, and this was worse.

I shook my head at the meaningless wavy lines on the mirror – grumbling a little at the fact that the school would of course be far more worried about lipstick on a mirror than more important things – and went into one of the cubicles which was still lit. Putting my bag down and lowering the seat to sit on the closed cover, I got out a book. I didn't open it though, instead staring at the cover.

This wasn't the book I'd packed this morning. I thought I'd picked up… no, this did look familiar. 'Fereydun's Foe' – I thought I'd seen it on my dad's shelves at some point. It looked kind of like some of the self-help books he read; you know, 'how to stay calm and get what you want from negotiations' and that sort of thing. I turned it over, and looked at the back – the standard mass-produced approval ratings. 'Five out of five stars', 'cathartic', and all the other things which someone paid to say what the published wanted might say.

Idly I flicked through it – eyes raised at some of the diagrams within – and then put it back in my bag. Drat. I must have picked up the wrong one. Just about in line with today. I'd probably forget where my locker was next or something. I was distracted, nervous, feeling strange sensations of déjà vu. Things were fine. Everything had been better since mid-November or so.

But why did I feel sick, nervous, and anxious? Was it just paranoia and nerves? Well, come to think of it, the noise of the water in the pipes did sound a lot like whispering. It was just a faint susurration at the edge of hearing, but with no one else going into these toilets – probably because of the broken light and vandalism – it was all I could hear, beside my own breath.

And here I was, creeping myself out. Shaking my head, I left the cubicle, and stared at myself in the mirror, adjusting my glasses. The lipstick on the mirrors made it hard to find an untouched area to see my whole face in, but I managed it in the end. The poor light cast long shadows over my face, and made me look even paler than usual.

I turned on the taps, to splash some cold water on my face and wake myself up. The water which came out, however, was freezing cold and flecked with rust. I yelped, flinching away. There was no way cold water should be that cold. It was like having liquid ice cubes poured over my hands. Great. So the toilets were just a mess and what now? Had the boiler blown or something? What the hell had happened here over the holidays? Had there been some kind of accident? Had a disgruntled student triggered, and decided to go and mess the place up?

Actually, if that was the case, the school authorities would probably be getting on my case. I mean, look at me. 'The quiet sort', 'a loner', 'few friends'. All I'd need to be is male, and I'd be hitting too many of the stereotypes for 'school blaster' for anyone to be comfortable.

I yelped again when one of the remaining lights overhead in the bathroom blew. Wide-eyed I stared back at my reflection, shrouded by the layer of lipstick between it and me. This… this wasn't funny. Whatever was going on. I shouldn't be in here. Maybe I was being set up and people were just waiting outside to catch me red-handed. I dried my rust-flecked hands on my jeans, and left as fast as I could. I was just going to grab the things from my locker and go.

No one was waiting for me outside the bathroom, to point the finger of blame. But that was not reassuring, because no one was in the corridor at all. And that wasn't right at all, because when I checked my watch, classes wouldn't start for almost quarter of an hour. The corridor should have been just as packed as it had been when I went into the toilets. Hell, I'd only been in there for maybe five minutes, if that. Probably less.

But there was no one here. Had… had people been evacuated? No, that wasn't right. There was no fire alarm. Maybe I was running late? No, I checked my watch again, and it was working. I laughed to myself, a bitter note in the sound. I had been feeling alone as I walked through the halls and now I actually was alone. It wasn't an improvement.

Where was everyone?

I took deep breaths, trying to stop myself worrying. Maybe… yeah, my watch must have been wrong. Which meant I was late. Which meant I had to head straight to the lockers to grab my stuff, and apologise for being late on the first day back. If only I'd had a phone, it'd have been up to date, but as things were going this morning, I'd probably have left it in my room even if I had one.

My feet beat against the dark tiles of the corridors. They sounded almost as loud as my heart.

And I managed to keep on lying to myself until I was right at the locker room. Because if I was to be quite honest, I was lying to myself. Even if classes had started, then I would have been able to hear people. I would have been able to see people, in the classrooms I quite deliberately avoided looking in. I ignored that I climbed down more flights of stairs than existed in the school to get to the locker room, and I ignored that all the paint was missing from the walls, leaving bare concrete and the exposed steel bones of the structure.

It was only when I stepped into the locker-room itself, which was somehow in this place it should not have been, that I realised that I was just shambling through routine. Trying to control my breath and avoid hyperventilating, I crammed my fist into my mouth and whimpered into it. No, no, no. This didn't make sense. What was I doing here? Everyone mysteriously vanishing? The way the familiar corridors and ceilings of the school were all unfamiliar? No, something was happening which really should not be – whether I was ill, or some kind of cape-related phenomenon was going on, or some other stranger thing, I didn't know.

The floor was wet, ice-slick. Someone had split red juice all over the floor. It was cranberry, by the smell of it. And it was almost cold enough in here that it could be ice. My guess in the toilets must have been right. The boilers for the radiators of this bit of the school must not be working. The ventilation ducts were spewing cold air into the locker room in vast cyclic blasts, beating pulses which left me shivering.

I heard a noise behind me, and turned. What I saw defied explanation.

There were three of them and yet there were one. Three faces; Sophia Hess, Emma Barnes and Madison Clements and yet they were mere extrusions of something horrible.

I screamed and I kicked and I wept. All was for nothing. I was weedy, weak, worthless. Dark-skinned Sophia, eyes black and irisless grinned as she bent my arms behind my back, one knee to my kidneys enough to knock all breath out of me. Emma's red hair was a blaze, too bright for my dimming vision, and she tore off my satchel, throwing it to the ground. And Madison, her 'cute' yellow cardigan strangely out-of-place in the pain-filled world I was now living in, was waiting by a heavy iron door, holding it open for her syzygy-selves. For me.

Still, I fought against the three-faced monster which grabbed for me. Laughter was the only response I got to my screams.

It did nothing. The knife-scent of rust and iron and vileness wafting from the cell-locker tore its way through my nose as I was dragged towards it. And unceremoniously, I was forced inside, pain stabbing into my front and sides from the contents of the jail. The grinding of the bolts to my prison being dragged into place echoed for a long time, until after the laughter had faded.

That's when the nails started to dig into my flesh, red-hot daggers within me. That's when the tiny things began to crawl over my skin, wet little wriggling insects sullying me with their touch. And that's when the voices started.


	2. Chrysalis 1-02

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 1.02**

The smell wasn't the worst bit, though it was horrible beyond belief. The darkness wasn't the worst bit, though there was so little light I could barely see what filled my cramped prison. The pain wasn't the worst bit, though rusty nails lined the inside of the locker like some kind of low-budget medieval torture device. The worst bit wasn't even the voices, which whispered just outside of comprehension and only got louder each time I screamed.

The worst bit was what I could feel against my skin.

I can't begin to describe it. I could talk about the damp. The putrid _sensation _of sticking my hands in _filth_ so that I didn't fall onto nail-lined walls. I could talk about my blood. It crept down my skin whenever I gashed myself, cooling and congealing at it went. I could even talk about the wriggling. The mess under my hands, fermented tampons and worse, seemed to crawl between my fingers, creeping everywhere it could.

But that wouldn't encompass the whole. It wouldn't cover the burning muscles that set my skin on fire, and couldn't stop me from slipping into the foul walls. It wouldn't cover how the smell and the feel combined, so I could taste the blood and rust and piss and shit and menses in every breath, leaving me lightheaded and even weaker. It wouldn't cover how my mind ran in circles, knowing it would get worse if I didn't move and worse if I did, so shuffling was as agonizing as stillness.

Sensory deprivation is meant to be a kind of torture. Somehow, they'd managed to find something worse than that. There was just enough light for me to see the things inside, if I strained. The screaming whispers were horrible to listen to, but I couldn't help but try to understand them. All I could do was concentrate on smell and pain and touch, amplifying the worst things I could think of.

I'd like to claim I found my centre. Discovered some kind of inner resolve that let me withstand it. Spent my time thinking about how to escape the box, how to get revenge. Managed to stay cool, calm and collected, knowing that I'd be found when classes were over.

Of course I didn't. First I screamed to be rescued, and then I just screamed. I cried. I whimpered. I swore and I prayed and I cursed. I begged anyone – anything, everything – for help. I yelled, to drown out the whispers as much as to attract attention.

"Help me," I screamed. "Help! Anyone! Please! No, help, help!"

The distorted echoes washed back to me, deafening whispers made up of my own voice, "No help."

"No anyone."

"No one."

Nothing came. I was alone – utterly alone. The monster wearing my tormentor's faces had gone, and the school was empty. The whispering, moaning, screaming voices were mine. All of them. My own cries, reflected and refracted and distorted, endlessly. Hours? Minutes? Seconds? Days? The only sense of time I had was my own heartbeat, and that beat like an insect's wings, slicing seconds finely into an eternity.

As far as I was concerned, every human being might have been scoured from the face of the earth. Huge gulfs of time and space and the filthy metal walls of my prison separated me from anything else.

I don't know how long I'd been in there until I started seeing things. Not long, I think, but I couldn't be sure. That's what happens to people put in sensory deprivation. The mind starts seeing patterns in the dark. They're not real.

That's what I whispered to myself, at least.

… Emma sneered down at me. I was sprawled down on the floor, against clean tiles, the betrayal cutting through my mind. She was my friend! Why was she acting like this? Contempt and amusement and guilt orbited her, each wearing her face. There was no guilt in the intangible hordes which surrounded the other two. As I watched, Guilt-Emma weakened and sickened before my eyes, Contempt eating her alive.

… my father yelled at my mother. This was the first time they'd argued like this, and the heat of his anger was almost palpable. I could feel it, even through the walls. He screamed at her and she screamed back and everything went wobbly for me. Their words danced around me, burning like magnesium candles. The door slammed shut, bouncing on its hinges, and she screamed one last remark back at him. One _final_ remark because…

… my mother clutched the wheel of her car with whitened knuckles. Her eyes were reddened. There were still tears in the corner of her eyes. She reached for her pockets, pulling out her phone.

"No!" I screamed, and even from my unseen vantage I could hear the mocking echoes from inside the jail-locker. "No! Please, Mum, no! Don't! Put it… no!"

She didn't listen. Perhaps she couldn't. It had already happened, I couldn't do a thing to change it. I was helpless, useless, trapped as a watcher just as much as I was trapped in a stinking locker. She had the power to do it, and I had none to change her decision.

I saw every last moment. I saw her last moments. I'd wondered what had happened, how it had gone down. Just the morbid imaginings of a child who'd lost her mother. It wasn't the same. There had been more blood in my imaginings. A certain edge of the cartoonish. It had been a closed casket funeral, so I hadn't ever seen the body. I knew that meant it had to have been bad. Watching in person, it was almost pathetically simple.

When the hallucinations ended, I wanted them to start again. Wasn't that horrible? I would prefer to endure the betrayal of my best friend, the shouting of my parents, and the death of my mother than I would to be myself. I would rather experience the worst bits of my life up until now, over and over again, than live one more second in my own body.

They didn't just show me those three scenes. They showed me everything. My entire life - or so it felt - reflected in a harsh mirror. Every least cruelty against me and every thoughtless deed I'd done. In its own way, it was almost an offer. This is the world outside this box, it said, and this is what you've made of it. Are you proud?

I screamed, begged and protested when I was seeing the worst days of my life paraded before me. I did just the same when I was trapped in the nightmare-world of my existence.

No help. No end. Nothing.

"What do you _want_?" I gasped hoarsely.

"What do you want?" echoed back my own voice.

And all the time, the filth on the floor of the locker-jail and on the walls crawled against my skin, as if it was alive. Creeping and squirming against my bare flesh, reminding me of where I was and what had happened to me. The bloody things hanging from the nails in the locker twitched. Their movement was only visible out of the corners of my eye.

Maybe I was already dead. I considered it, accepted it, rejected it several times. If I was dead, I had no idea what I'd done to deserve this. I wanted to die, though, if it would make this stop.

The voices laughed at me. They seemed to be encouraging it.

I raised my hands, staring at my palms. In the dim light, I could see the source of the crawling. Insects, the colour of old dried blood, camouflaged against the filth. Looking closer, they weren't worms. They were caterpillars. Specifically, they were the kind of caterpillar I'd seen on some documentary on the television, from – yes, it had been Hawaii, I thought hysterically.

The only place in the world that had carnivorous caterpillars.

They were under my skin. Burrowing in, another set of stabbing pains in my world of agony. I could see them, bloody red bulges of bruised and torn flesh which worked their way through my arms. Their nibbling sounded, of all things, like woodworm. A thin scratching noise, like fingernails against a wall, only coming from inside my body.

Maybe this was another hallucination. Yes, that was appealing. There was no reason there would be carnivorous caterpillars in my locker. You didn't get them around here. I was just having some kind of traumatic breakdown from, you know, being locked in a filth-filled locker. I could just ignore them, and the pain. If this was another hallucination, I could welcome the other ones, which at least didn't hurt in the same way. I could let Emma betray me, let my parents argue, let my mother die. It wouldn't hurt me the same way. I could just sit back and let it happen.

I could already see the lights flashing before my eyes, the visions waiting for me to sink into them. A surcease from pain of the flesh. The numbness of acceptance was just within reach.

Something inside me rebelled. Maybe it was pig-headedness, a refusal to accept that laying back and accepting it would make anything better. It hadn't before. I couldn't just let things happen to me. Maybe it was a simple survival instinct. I didn't want to be eaten alive by bugs. I'd take pain over death. I screamed all the louder. I didn't care if the demon-monster wearing the faces of my tormenters came back. I wanted to live.

Knife white-pain stabbed through one arm, and I crumpled into one of the walls. The squirming and crawling around the joint told me something had just started eating into my tendon. Once again, the visions welled up, offering a painfully nostalgic relief from pain.

I laughed out loud, a hint of madness in my voice. The bugs didn't want me to stay here? That meant I had something to fight against. Something in all this place which wasn't me. And that meant I had to beat them. I had to get the bugs out of me, and then I'd have won.

A pain in my leg, and I sagged, falling. One of the nails in the walls went clean through my flesh, and I screamed, jerking away. I squinted through the dim light at the dark patch of blood oozing through my clothes, and the caterpillar impaled on the metal barb, skewered like a sausage on a cocktail stick.

So that was it, then? Stab myself with rusty nails to kill the worms inside me and pull them out? It didn't make sense that it had come out so cleanly, but with a sudden cold realisation I _knew _it would work.

It was the hardest thing I had ever done. After the first one, I was crying. After the third, I had no voice left to scream. I couldn't find them all, so I resorted to scrabbling at my skin with my fingernails, trying to squish them. It was insane, but I had to do it, had to keep going. If I stopped doing it, I'd never start again, and then they'd eat me alive.

When it was done, I was shaking like a leaf, gasping and crying. A mess of locker-filth and my own blood, tears coated my face. I had bitten my tongue, and I welcomed it, because the iron taste of fresh blood blotted out the stench of everything else around me. I leaned against the locker, marking it with two bloody handprints, exhausted. All around me, dead caterpillars hung impaled on nails, not one left wriggling inside me.

The pain was everywhere. I could feel blood tricking - and more than trickling - from each of my wounds, and I think I fainted.

But I must have regained consciousness, because the door gave way, and I staggered forward, out. Light washed over my eyes, leaving me screaming at the brightness. And following me, from out of my stinking jail, tore ten thousand bloody butterflies, their wings marked with the whorls of my fingerprints. I collapsed onto the cold tiles, welcome blackness taking me.


	3. Chrysalis 1-03

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 1.03**

I was called back to consciousness by a slow, methodical bleeping. The light was too bright when I opened my eyes, and I felt my eyes water. When my vision had somewhat cleared, all I could see was an unfamiliar ceiling. Letting my head fall to the right, I saw pale pinkish walls. It felt like too much effort to check the other side.

I was also feeling good. No, as in, _really _good. The kind of good you never normally feel. Like all the stresses in the world had just rolled off me.

"She's awake!" I heard. After a moment of thought I realised it was my dad, though he sounded slightly off. He moved into my range of vision, dragging a chair, and sat down. His clothes were rumpled, and he mostly looked relieved.

"Hey, dad," I managed weakly, smiling fuzzily. My voice sounded croaky. Groggily, I realised he'd been crying. His eyes were reddened. "I…" I wasn't sure what to say. I wasn't sure of very much at all.

He glanced at someone else, with a hint of nervousness, and then forced himself to smile. "Hey, kiddo," he said. "Nice to have you back with us."

"I don't think I went anywhere," I said.

"Awake, then," he said, his mouth twitching.

I blinked owlishly. "I think. Uh, I might still be asleep," I said. "It's all warm. Oh. Am I, uh, late for school?" I swallowed. "I don't want to go," I said weakly. "It was all… strange."

He chewed on his lip nervously, running a hand through his hair. "How are you feeling?" he asked. "Does… does it hurt?"

I smiled. "No. I feel… good," I said, with some thought.

"Your wrists don't hurt?" he asked, leaning forwards.

"Hurt? No. Why would they?"

My dad looked miserable. "They found you in a locker," he said. "Did you try to k- you'd clawed at the locker door, and. And." He gulped. "And at yourself," he said weakly. "Please, Taylor, please, if… I mean, it must have been… bad in there, but please tell me that you're fine now. That you don't want to- that you want to keep on living."

Keep on living? What was he talking about? Ah. "Oh, no," I said. "I just… I had to. To get the insects out. Stop them. Eating me. Stop them with the nails on the walls." I sighed happily. "Left them skewered."

His brows furrowed. "Taylor, what are you talking about?"

"Lots of. Caterpillars. The ones from… the island place. In the Pacific. They were trying to eat me, when. I was seeing things. Bad things. But I managed to get them all."

"Mr Hebert," said the nurse, his worried eyes narrowed, "please, stay calm. She's on a lot of painkillers at the moment, so she's not entirely lucid. And remember what we talked about earlier?"

Ah. So something like morphine was the reason I was so fuzzy and warm and happy. That made a lot of sense. Wow. No wonder people get addicted to this stuff. I'm – as many people could tell you – not usually a fuzzy person, but this was great. I just felt like smiling at everyone and everything. I could get used to this.

My arms felt like plaster blocks, but I managed to lift one and rest it on my dad's. "Sorry if you were worried," I managed. "Didn't mean to get locked. Inside the locker. But probably. No one apart from them. Saw it. And they're not going to talk." I giggled. "Three heads are worse than one," I said, which was hilariously funny.

I felt his fists bunch into balls. "You're okay now, Taylor," he said. "The school is… well, they're paying for this, and… listen, the hospital can get me if you need to talk to me, but there are some people I need to talk to… though I can wait if you want to talk about anything. Anything at all. Or want anything else."

I yawned. "I think I want to sleep again," I said.

And with that, I was drifting back off into warm soft sleep.

I woke up in the middle of the night. The clock on the unfamiliar bedside table flashed a green 03:17 at me. My bandaged hands were aching, and my throat was dry and sore. And all the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end.

Oh well. The painkillers had been nice while they lasted.

My throat felt like it was on fire. There was a sports bottle on the table beside my bed. I vaguely recalled that someone had said something about how that was there for me. I lifted my arms, feeling like they were made of lead, and stared at my hands. Well, I certainly wouldn't be holding a pen for a while. The bandages made me look like I was wearing mittens. My wrists really hurt whenever I tried to move my hands. And I didn't think that my fingernails were in a very good state. My fingers felt hot and tight, which meant they were probably infected.

That wasn't surprising, considering what I'd been putting my hands in.

With both hands, fighting the weariness which filled me, I managed to pick up the sports bottle with both hands. Whoever had put it there was a lifesaver, I thought, when I managed to get it to my mouth, pulling open the sports cap with my teeth. Maybe a third of the bottle later, I felt sufficiently human to try talking.

"Ow," I croaked.

Hmm. That was expressive of my feelings, but not too useful. Maybe I shouldn't try talking. I could remember a lot of screaming, so I probably didn't have much of a voice left. And…

… and I'd told my dad I'd tried to get the insects out with nails, I realised with dawning horror, as my mind mercilessly picked through what I'd said when I was in the warm happy place from the painkillers. Oh shit.

Part of my horror was an instinctual reaction. What had happened in there somehow felt intensely private. Telling someone about it, even my dad, felt like I'd just been seen naked. Most of it – pretty much all of it, really – was because I'd just told my dad that I'd been trying to kill insects under my skin and from the way he'd reacted… oh boy. And I'd started laughing at my own pathetic joke, in a not-very-sane way. And I was in hospital and everything hurt and I was sure I'd been impaling myself on nails. And oh, please, please, please let him not think I'd actually seen a demon-monster thing. Had I said anything which might make him think I had? I wasn't sure.

He was going to think that I was crazy. And the nurse had been there too. So the hospital might think it, too.

A wave of nausea passed through me. I trembled from the cold shivers.

Maybe they would just think I'd been babbling while on the drugs. I really hoped that was true.

For all I knew, I had gone crazy. Anyone might have, when they were in that kind of place. I might have just already been having a small nervous breakdown when going back to school, and then _that _had happened. It would have been enough to push anyone over the edge.

I shuffled myself into an upright position, body aching and complaining. At least I wasn't tied to the bed or anything else which young adult novels had told me indicated I was a suicide risk. There was the glint of a camera in one corner of the room, but maybe that was normal. I hadn't exactly been in hospital much.

Did I feel suicidal? I checked, and decided that no, I certainly didn't want to die. That was reassuring. I did want more of those drugs, but that was because my everything was aching. Or sometimes hurting. And maybe I shouldn't have any more, if I couldn't control what I said when I was under their influence. I didn't feel crazy, and the world around me looked normal, but I didn't want other people to find out.

What would Emma, Madison and Sophia do if they knew? There was a girl in my year who'd tried to kill herself, and people who sort of knew her treated her differently.

Again, the nausea came. I wanted some fresh air. There was a window to my left, the curtains closed. It might have some small bit which could be slid open. I wormed my way out from under the covers of my bed, and swung my legs out.

My shins poked out from under the hospital gown I was wearing. There were several long blue plasters running along them, but they looked – and felt – better than my hands. I couldn't see or feel the bit where I was _sure _I'd torn out a chunk of flesh from my calves on a nail. Maybe that meant I wasn't as hurt as I thought I was. My legs still felt weak and useless.

When I got out of hospital, I was going to get into better shape. I promised myself that. If I'd been stronger, if I'd been fitter I would have been able to stand longer. And maybe I'd have been able to run from the three-faced monster which had worn the faces of my tormenters. Or maybe just from the three of them, if I was already having a nervous breakdown at the time.

The floor was cool under my feet as I staggered to the window, and I nearly fell. I forced myself to shuffle along, arms waving as I tried to keep my balance despite the pain. Eventually, I managed to cross the few metres of floor, and tug aside the curtains.

There was a moth on the windowpane. That was strange. It was January, and I could see frost everywhere. It was probably just very cold, trying to warm itself on the heat from the window. I sagged forward, resting my brow on the cold glass.

Now that I was upright I could feel how chilly it must be outside, and reconsidered whether it would be a good idea to open the window. Even if I wanted to face the cold, one problem was how useless my arms felt. Given the clumsiness of my bandaged hands, even if I _could_ get it open I'd have problems closing it. Another was that the window seemed to be locked, and I couldn't see a key.  
No fresh air for me, then. Well, at least the cold glass against my forehead was nice. And right now it seemed like a lot of effort to walk – okay, totter – back to my bed. I'd just rest up for a while before trying it.

What the hell had happened to me? I looked down at my bandaged hands and wrists. I… I had wanted to die in that locker, yes. But I didn't think I'd tried to kill myself. I nudged down my sleeves, checking for the nail punctures which should be covering my forearms. No sign of them there either. And - at least before today - I wouldn't have said that those three would have tried to kill me. They probably wouldn't have gone to the effort of covering the inside of a locker with nails.

Maybe I had just been seeing things? If I had gashed myself on one of the brackets on the inside of the locker, I could have just panicked.

Maybe – and here I barely dared to hope – it was a trigger event? I'd read up on them at some point – the moment when a cape gained their powers, hero or villain. They were supposed to be moments of great personal stress, and I had been more than stressed back then. Did I have powers? How could I even tell?

I thought really hard about flying. I didn't fly. Thinking very hard about energy beams, feeling strong, and controlling the electricity in the clock had similarly little effect. Any hope that I had a super-regeneration power was thwarted when concentrating on my hands only made them hurt more.

Guess I wasn't going to be the next Alexandria, then.

It was just a silly dream. That kind of thing didn't happen to people you knew in real life. I leant my forehead back against the window, staring out into the dark. Sodium street lights lit up the cold, playing over my face. I shivered, the hair on the back of my neck standing up. At the edge of one light, I could see a gang of youths, swaddled up in heavy clothing, spray-painting something on one of the empty shops over the street. The letters 'ABB'. Another bunch of gangers, with nothing better to do than make a mess. Sad.

What was going to happen to me now? I was clearly going to be in hospital for a while. After that, would I go back to school? What was going to happen to my life?

Over in the middle distance, a streak of white light in the sky drew my attention. It clearly wasn't a bird, and it was moving too low and too erratically to be a plane. It was also approaching, low and fast. I shivered. Of course it was coincidence that a cape would show up just as I was thinking about them. It wasn't a sign.

Still, I watched as the glowing figure, trailing white light, descended from the sky. The gang members paused, one of them jabbing a finger in her direction. I saw another draw a gun, which glinted in the yellow street-light.

The figure raised a hand, and a blinding flash of white light lit up the street. I winced, blinking back tears. It had been painfully bright for me; I had no idea what it must have been like for the gangers. Wiping my eyes on my shoulder, I managed to catch the last bit of the brutal-looking beating the woman was giving them. I strained, trying to get a closer look at her. Maybe I could at least find out who it was later. I thought it might be Photon Mom, but I couldn't see too well from this distance.

She flashed white again, and my head reeled. Colours danced in front of my vision, like I'd pressed my fingers into my eyeballs. I staggered, almost falling, but managed to cling onto the wall. Light flickered in front of my eyes and my head ached, just like it had when I'd woken up.

Well, maybe later I could find out who was flying around Brockton Bay using white light. Turning, I staggered back to bed, clumsily slipping into the warmth of the covers.

If I dreamed that night, I didn't remember it.


	4. Chrysalis 1-04

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 1.04**

It was dark. I couldn't get out. I could taste the blood on my tongue and every inhalation made me want to vomit. I couldn't get out. The pain stabbed through my arm, and I screamed.

I couldn't _ever _get out.

I woke, gasping for air. My clammy skin was cold against the morning air. I smelt of fear, the hot, damp sweaty tang filling the room. Rolling onto my side, trying very hard not to bang my hands, I whimpered. I was exhausted. I just wanted to sleep. But I couldn't get a proper night's rest.

The nightmares were getting worse and worse. As they brought down the dose of the painkillers – something I had asked for – I was dreaming at night. Dreaming again and again of the locker.

Letting out a shuddering breath, I tried to think of something else. The clock on the bedside table was showing 07:39. It was only just light outside, and the world I could see through the crack in the curtains looked grey and dull.

Regular. Mundane.

Maybe I could ask for a night-light, to see if sleeping in a better-lit place would stop the dreams. Or I could ask for more painkillers. Maybe my body was associating the pain in my hands with being back there.

No. I couldn't let them know what I'd seen. I couldn't control what I said when I was on the medication, and I didn't want people to think I was crazy. I'd already let my dad know more than I wanted him to. I wasn't sure if he knew that it was Emma, Sophia and Madison who'd pushed me in there, but I'd heard him shouting on the phone outside. He wasn't letting the school handle things. He had taken things to the police. Someday soon, I'd have someone come in to take a formal witness statement.

Just the thought of that made my mouth feel dry. I painfully reached to the sports bottle on my side table, and found it empty.

Damn. My eyes went to the sink in the room. Over the past few days, I'd found just how painful trying to do anything was. My injured hands were torture in their own right. Not just because they hurt – though they did – but because they made me useless. There were so many things I couldn't do for myself. I could get out of bed and make my way to the sink. Unscrewing the lid of the bottle, filling it up, and then resealing it? I honestly didn't know if I could do it.

I was still going to try. I hated being useless.

Painfully, I levered my aching body out of bed, and stumbled over to the mirror above the sink. I looked exhausted. My lips were pale, and there were bags under my eyes. There were plasters down both cheeks, covering self-inflicted wounds. I tried not to look at them. Apparently they were shallow, didn't seem to be infected and might not scar. I was still vain enough to not want to think of what I might see when the dressings came off.

Holding the bottle in both hands, keeping it held up more through pressure than any grip on it, I managed to unscrew the cap with my teeth. I kept it gripped in my mouth, because I certainly wouldn't manage to pick it up again on my own. I managed to wedge the bottle under the faucet, and I thanked whoever had designed this hospital that the tap was a lever design.

There were flecks of rust in the water.

I screamed, spitting out the bottle cap, and leapt back. Of course, I fell back, landing heavily on my bottom, which joined the chorus of aches and pains. Much more prominent was the stabbing pain white-hot from my hands. I bit back another scream, eyes watering.

There was a clatter of feet from outside, and one of the nurses entered. "Taylor," asked the nurse, alarmed. "What happened?"

"I just fell," I lied. I put on a fake smile, trying to slow my breathing. I wiped my eyes on my shoulder. "I thought I could manage to refill the water bottle on my own. Looks like I wasn't as steady on my feet as I thought I was."

The woman tutted. "You should have just rung for help," she said, not unkindly. "I know it must be frustrating, not being able to do things for yourself, but you need to give yourself time to heal."

"I didn't want to be a bother," I said weakly.

"Look! You've gone and started bleeding again," she said, holding my hand out for me. I could see the dark stain spreading on the middle finger of my right hand, soaking through the dressing. "Young lady, forget 'not being a bother' and just ring if you want your water refilled. Your hands are infected. I don't want you making yourself any worse!"

My cheeks were flushed, from humiliation as well as pain, while she helped me back to bed. I would have been screaming from frustration, if I hadn't been terrified out of my wits by the sight of the rust in the water.

The nurse refilled the bottle, and made a note on the sheet at the end of my bed. With a stern 'Next time, call for help', she departed. The water was clear this time. There was no sign of rust. But of course there wouldn't be, because I'd run the tap.

I wasn't seeing things. Hopefully.

I cried myself to sleep, and I wasn't sure if the tears were coming from frustration, pain or fear.

Of course, I didn't even get a proper amount of rest out it if. I got woken up by my dad, who told me that he'd got a sudden phone-call asking if they could take my statement today. Then came the humiliating bit where he fed me breakfast, because I couldn't hold cutlery myself. Somehow it was worse than when the nurses did it. There was just enough time after that for him to sponge down my face so I at least wasn't so sweaty, but I wasn't going to be winning any beauty pageants looking like this. Not that I would have won them anyway.

The policewoman was a somewhat-overweight motherly looking Hispanic woman. She was wearing lily-of-the-valley perfume, and had a red butterfly clip in her hair. Just the sort you'd want to be talking to an 'emotionally fragile' teenage girl, I thought cynically.

I wondered how many sad stories like mine she'd heard, and whether she really cared when she heard another one.

"So, Miss Hebert… or would you prefer me to call you Taylor?" she began, after pulling up a chair beside my bed.

"Taylor," I said.

"Okay, Taylor. You can call me Maria. I'm here to take a witness statement from you… have you ever done that before?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Well, okay. Basically, what's going to happen is that I'm going to ask you some questions, and I'm going to record the conversation. We can go at your own pace. All I want you to do is try to be honest and say everything you remember. Just stick to what you can remember, do you understand? Don't make guesses – just say if you don't remember something or if you're not sure. And if you lie, you can get in trouble, so don't do that, okay?"

I swallowed. "I understand," I said. I understood, but I still wasn't going to say everything.

"Now, you can have your dad in here, or I can ask him to leave. Which would you prefer, Taylor?"

I was in two minds about that. If he was here – he was my dad. And I was going to actually, possibly, really be getting the three who did this to me in serious trouble. When I put it like that, it was a scary idea. It felt better to have him here. But on the other hand, if I let things slip, I didn't want him to hear.

"I'd like to be alone," I said. I felt awful just from the way he looked at me when I said that. I tried to look apologetic at him, but I'm not sure if it worked. The cop cleared her throat, and I turned my attention back on her.

Something flickered in the background. No, that wasn't quite it. It was more like the background flickered. My dad and the woman stayed where they were sat, but the world around them changed. Just for a moment.

"Taylor?" the cop said kindly. She could obviously see my expression, and how my breathing had sped up. "Is something the matter?"

Was something the matter? No, of course nothing was the matter, officer. I mean, it wasn't as if I had just seen the walls around me as bare concrete, rust bleeding from the exposed beams in loops and swirls. It wasn't like the temperature had just dropped twenty degrees for a few seconds, and all the hair on my arms was standing on end. It wasn't like I had just heard the water in the pipes.

"My hands just hurt," I lied. It wasn't actually a lie, even. They were hurting more. "I bent them by accident," I added.

"Oh, I'm sorry," the cop said. "Do you want me to get some…"

"I'll be fine," I said quickly. "I just… well, I'm still on some painkillers, but not as much as I could have because I really don't like the way they make me feel. Some pain is better than the dizziness."

She tucked back a stray lock of hair. "Do you think you can go on?" she asked.

"I'll be fine," I assured her, ignoring the expression on my dad's face. I thought the staff might have told him that I had asked them to reduce the dosage of painkillers a bit, but apparently not. Yes, asking him to leave had been a good idea. I didn't want to think about what he'd say when he found out about all the bullying last term.

"Well, okay," she said, pulling out a recorder from her pocket, along with a few lapel mikes. "If Mr Hebert… sorry, but she's asked you to leave and…"

"I understand," he said slowly, pulling himself to his feet. "I'll… I'll just go get some food at the canteen, how about that?"

The door slammed behind him with a grating shriek of metal against metal. I bit down on my tongue to avoid yelping at that sound, and tried not to think of what the momentary flash had revealed to me.

I tried my very best to make it through the interview. Focusing on the questions and carefully working out my answers helped. As long as I was otherwise occupied, I didn't have to think of the burning figure who stalked out in place of my father, or the hollow-eyed porcelain doll which had replaced the cop who was listening to my every word.

I wasn't going mad. I was just stressed out and tired. That's what I told myself.


	5. Chrysalis 1-05

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 1.05**

The horizon ahead was blood red, meeting iron-grey clouds above. The car's engine droned meaninglessly as I stared out the window, watching the illuminated signs flash by. McDonalds, Walmart, QuikSave, Belco, Burger King, Taco Bell. The outskirts of Brockton Bay was a mess of out-of-town shops, fast food, fuel pumps and industrial estates. They were relatively lively along the freeway, but I knew the side roads were packed with abandoned warehouses and closed stores. Most of the meth in the city apparently came from around that post-industrial hellhole. Not that we were headed here for that.

I was just waiting for us to get to Ye Olde Asylum, which would be now stocking all-new Taylor Hebert as a hopefully-limited time offer.

Of course, it wasn't really an asylum if you looked at the paperwork. We don't have them anymore. They're a legacy of a less enlightened era. That was what I'd been told. They didn't do things like cutting up your brain or electrocuting you to try to make you sane again.

But call it an asylum, a loony bin, a funny farm, a psychiatric inpatient ward, or whatever. It was where I was going.

"You want to stop and get something to eat?" my dad asked. He tried a weak smile. "You don't know what the food's going to be like in there."

"Sure," I said.

We pulled in to the nearest place – it turned out to be a McDonalds – and dad went in to grab something for us. By unspoken mutual agreement, we ate in the car. There were conversations we didn't want other people to hear.

"It's just for a little bit," my dad, swallowing a mouthful of Big Mac, told me. "Probably only a week or two, if that. They just want to watch you for a while, in a nice and safe and quiet location. And…" he trailed off.

"… the school doesn't want me back," I said, finishing his sentence for him. I picked at my fries. I wasn't feeling hungry, but I forced myself to eat. At least I could mostly pick things up again. "Not until they know for sure I'm not going to go embarrass them by killing myself and you making a fuss about how they did _nothing _to help. I'd really hate to be an inconvenience to them. Or get them bad publicity in the press. Worse than I have already."

He pursed his lips. "Look," he said, taking a deep breath, "for my part, I'd quite like to see that you're feeling all right. I know you're not feeling all right about it. You're having nightmares and flashbacks. I don't want you to suffer, kiddo. You do get this, right? I know you've been trying to tough things out so I don't get worried, but that's just worrying me even more!"

"It's not quite…" I began.

"Please. Taylor. Listen to me. You don't need to worry about the cost – it's not going to bankrupt me or anything like that – because they're paying for it. I'm sure when they find you're fine – which they will do when you've talked about things and had a chance to realise nothing like this will happen again – they'll give you a clean bill of health and we can put all of this behind us."

We had already had this conversation. More than once, actually, in the weeks I'd spent recovering in hospital. I ran my fingers over my new wrist-bands, which covered the self-inflicted scars. My fingers were still a mess, with blue bandages covering regrowing fingernails. I'd been lucky, they'd said at the hospital. It had been touch-and-go for a while for some of my fingers. The infections had nearly claimed some of them. I still couldn't feel things properly with two fingers on my left hand, and it hurt to bend them.

"Of course, let's all put it behind us," I said, bitterly. My dad's face went red, but I didn't care. "Because that's what they want, isn't it? The school doesn't like that the cops are involved. Let's just turn it into a story about how I'm crazy and tried to kill myself."

I'd told the policewoman who'd come in to get details that it had been Emma, Sophia and Madison who had done it, and that no one else had been around. I'd left out that they'd been three aspects of a demonic force, because that was the sort of thing you didn't say to the police. I was sure it had been them. They had the motive and their past actions supported it.

Of course, they had denied it. Which turned it into a she-said-she-said case. There was just no evidence, and the school would trust the word of Miss Popular, Miss Popular-with-a-rich-lawyer-for-a-dad, and Miss Athletic over a weirdo loner like me. The idea of getting fingerprints or DNA was laughable because there were years of greasy fingerprints over the lockers, and as for DNA – well, half the girls in the school would show up as having contributed to the blood in there. And there were no witnesses. I didn't know if that was because the three of them had really done it when there was no one around, or just that no one had come forward. I liked to think that it was the former. After all, even if everything had been all weird, I hadn't seen anyone else around. My faith in my schoolmates wasn't high enough that I could rule out the latter.

My case hadn't been helped by the way I'd been waking screaming, four nights a week. It had got worse once they'd reduced the painkillers. When I was no longer in a drugged stupor, I dreamed I was back in the locker. Usually, I woke up when the first nail went in. Usually.

It wasn't just the dreams. I'd see flashes of the weird empty, cold, rusted world I'd seen during the day. I'd made the mistake of letting my dad know, too. Not the full details, of course, but when he'd found me crying in my bed after going to the toilets and seeing, just for a moment, the lipstick on the mirror, I hadn't been any state to lie to him properly. It was getting worse the less sleep I got. I was seeing flashes of the cold, empty, rusted world most days. So he 'knew' that I kept on having flashbacks to just before I got shut in the locker, and was having nightmares.

In my calmer moments, I half-thought that maybe some time as an in-patient in a psychiatric place might help. Maybe if I talked about it, things would be better.

But if I talked about it, they'd think I was really crazy. So what if I was having nightmares? Anyone would be having nightmares if they'd been shut in a locker like that. So what if I was having flashbacks? They'd fade with time. And it wasn't really my fault that I'd hit that nurse who'd come to check on me when I'd been having a nightmare. I wasn't even awake when I did it.

Still, the prospect of spending time away from school… it wasn't unappealing from a certain point of view. I didn't want to see Sophia, Emma or Madison ever again.

I just didn't want people to think that I was crazy.

We finished our meals, and headed on, the winter sunlight fading. The place itself was just outside Brockton Bay, a distance back from the main road where the outskirts trailed off. On first inspection, the central building on the complex looked like it had been converted from a hotel. At least that was better than looking like it had been converted from a prison.

The hotel feeling was reinforced by the presence of an entry desk, and a place to check in the one bag I was permitted. It was going to be searched for contraband. The elderly man sitting behind the desk gave my dad some papers to sign. I just looked around, feeling lost. Mid-way through the paperwork, a woman arrived and gave the pair of us a talk on the 'code of conduct' and how there were medical professionals on staff and how they were here to help me.

There were a thousand little things like that, which all seemed to be summarised by 'we're here to help you, and so you should do what we tell you to do and take any medication you get prescribed'. It blurred into a mix of words and rules and smiling people whose expressions didn't reach their eyes. I just sat there, letting the words wash over me, and tried to ignore the churning feeling in my stomach.

Perhaps eating a greasy fast food meal had been a mistake.

My dad squeezed my hand. I gasped, and he winced. "Sorry," he said, pausing while he reset his chain of thoughts. "You're going to be all right," he said, and I wasn't sure if he was asking a question or trying to reassure me. Or possibly trying to reassure himself. I bit my lower lip, and tried not to look scared or cry. I don't think it worked too well, because he wrapped me up in a big hug. "I'll visit whenever I can get time," he promised, choking up.

"Thank you," I whispered.

With our farewells said, I was taken to get dressed in more 'appropriate' garments, which was a nice way of saying that I didn't even get to choose what I wore here. The baggy pyjamas that were waiting for me in the changing room were a statement in their own right. We don't trust you with your own clothing, they said. There wasn't even a bra. It had to go, in case I used it to hang myself. That was a thing people did, according to books. I would have been worried rather than just insulted if… uh, the lack had been a major hardship for me. My mum had only gone up to a B-cup after having me, and I took after her there.

Someone of a more philosophical bearing might have looked at the symbolic meaning. We were going to be treated like little children in here, so the lack of one of the signs of womanhood was appropriate in a perverse way. I wasn't feeling in such a state of mind, and thus it was just an indignity.

I slumped down, staring at my bandaged hands. I sniffled, flexing my fingers and feeling the dull ache. I'd been allowed to keep the wrist bands, at least. Clearly they could get away with manslaughter of dignity, but not murder.

There was a knock at the door. "Taylor," a woman called out. "Are you decent?"

"Yes," I answered.

A bulky woman, with a long, almost horse-like face entered. "Good evening. I'm Hannah." She even looked sympathetic when she said, "I understand it might feel bad to not be allowed to dress how you want. You're probably feeling kinda patronised and blue right now, yeah?"

"A little," I admitted.

"Well, that's just natural. There's a more flexible dress code allowed after you've got settled in, but at the moment, you're vulnerable. When we're sure you're not going to do anything silly, then there are more things you're allowed to wear."

I didn't feel very vulnerable, but I said nothing. I endured the patting down which checked that I wasn't hiding things on my person with what dignity I had left.

"Anyway," Hannah said, "I'm the point of contact for the Wilson rooms, which is where you'll be staying. It's a medium-term wing, so it's very unlikely you'll be here for more than a few months. There are five other girls in Wilson, and I'll introduce you to them later; we believe in mutual support here. If you have any problems, anything you'd like changed, then you just need to find me and I'll see what I can do. When we talk, it's confidential, and I'll only ever say anything to anyone else if I think you're really at risk. Okay? That's a promise."

"I understand," I said. Mutual support and other girls to talk to. How wonderful. I already wanted to leave. And faster than 'a few months'.

"I thought I'd show you to your room first and then I can show you around the place," she continued. "We can go over some of the rules and routines, and if your psychiatrist is free, I can introduce you to her. And also," the pager at her belt chimed, and she looked down. "Sorry, sorry," she said, going to check it.

"It's fine," I said.

She read the message, pursing her lips. "Okay, there's been a little change of plans," she said, eyes narrowed. "I can show you to your room, but then I'm needed somewhere. I'm sorry, this wasn't how things were meant to start, but…"

"It's fine," I said again, standing up.

"You can say more than two words at a time," she said with a forced smile.

"Oh." I supposed I hadn't been. I forced a fake smile. "I'm just feeling nervous."

"That's natural," she said. "Now, if you'll just come with me." I followed, trailed by someone who I mentally tagged as an orderly despite not being told what their actual job was.

My room for the immediate future was painted in a blandly inoffensive shade of pink. The windows were large, and only opened at the very top. The bed was built into the wall. The light fittings were likewise sealed into the room. There was a television, tucked into a locked cabinet which was bolted to the walls.

There were no sharp corners anywhere.

A perverse, impish instinct in my mind immediately started trying to work out a way to hurt myself with the things in here. Not that I wanted to. It was just a statement of rebellion. A silly one. I was going to be a good little girl and not scream at every last thing, and so I could go home. That was the plan.

"The staff will just be checking through your baggage," the orderly said in a bored tone, "and then it'll be delivered here. If you aren't trying to bring in any forbidden items, it shouldn't take too long."

"They said that books would be fine on the website," I asked, feeling a bit nervous. It looked like I was going to be bored here, and if I didn't have things to read, I might actually go crazy.

"Books are fine," she said, "as long as they're not on the restricted titles list."

Great. So who knew what kind of restrictions I'd be facing? I hadn't been able to find what was allowed and what was not on the website, so I'd just told dad to take a selection from my room.

An hour later, and Hannah hadn't returned. My baggage hadn't arrived either. I found the remote, and turned on the television, browsing through the channels until I found a news channel. There was some kind of PRT news conference going on. Apparently some villain called the Gatemaster had escaped from custody, and questions were being asked. Boring. Next channel. Something going on in Africa. Boring. Next channel. Aerial video of Florida Man chasing down a boat before headbutting the engine. Somewhat more interesting, but interrupted by an ad break.

With a sigh, I turned the television off. Had they forgotten about me already? Had _everyone vanished_? Was I in the empty, cold place I'd seen before I had been shut in the locker? Was this just a trap, a way to lure me back into there and… I took a deep breath.

No, that was just ridiculous. Settling down on my bed, I stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling. Why had I even agreed to do this? Oh yes. Because I was suffering flashbacks, having nightmares, had a constant fear of ending up in the locker again, and I was seeing things which weren't there.

Like right now. Even as I watched, the paint flaked off the ceiling to reveal the bare concrete covered in scribblings in who-knew-what. My heart beat like a drum, pounding in my chest. I wanted to scream, but bit down. I'm not crazy, I told myself, over and over again. I couldn't let them think I was crazy. Even if when I looked around, the television screen was cracked and broken and something had been scribbled on the protective screen in red lipstick. Everything just looked cold and bleak. At heart it was no different from a jail.

That wasn't the worst bit. There was a deep, red-black stain in the floor, all around the bed. And streaky handprints on the walls, in that same, morbid colour. And one on the window. Just looking at them made me feel awful. They felt like misery and death; they smelt like blood. The scent filled the room.

I felt sick. But I couldn't scream. I wouldn't let myself.

The bed was wet to the touch, cold clinging liquid seeping through my clothes. I sat up, arms protesting at the sudden movement, and the red-black oily liquid dripped from me. The bed was drenched. I was drenched. It was clinging to me and it wouldn't let go, seeping coldness right into my bones.

Maybe I was crazy. Maybe I was seeing things and I should just end it. I'd never have to go back to school again, never have to face the bullies, never have to put up with the shame and the way that people would talk about me behind my back.

No. I squared my jaw. There was something _external _about the way I felt. That wasn't me. Those weren't my thoughts. This was something else, thinking for me. I ground my teeth together, and closed my eyes, thinking of nothing else. If it wasn't gone when I opened my eyes, I would scream.

The scent faded. I opened my eyes to the sight of pink walls and an unbroken TV. There was no strange red-black oil anywhere.

I don't know what drove me to do what I did next. Curiosity, perhaps. Or just a refusal to let a little thing like waking hallucinations win. I can be very stubborn sometimes. But I thought of the strange rusted world, thought of the bitterly cold oil, thought of what I'd seen in the locker room, and let out a slow breath.

And before my eyes, the paint flaked away from the walls once again revealing the scrawls and handprints, and the scent of blood was back. I closed my eyes, and thought of nothing, and it was gone.

Huh.


	6. Chrysalis 1-06

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 1.06**

I woke in the morning feeling groggy, headachey, and more than a little sniffly. I was probably coming down with a cold. I was tired, of course, but that had been true for days. Realising I could control when I saw those waking dreams didn't make the nightmares of being in the locker go away.

Maybe it might in time. I certainly hoped it would.

Because if I was mad, there was at least method to my madness. I made sure of that last night, after the porter had delivered what possessions I'd been allowed in here and Hannah had poked her head in to apologise. I hadn't minded that she was needed because some other girl was having a 'crisis'. It gave me time to experiment.

Concentrating on that cold rusted place made me see it again, redecorating the world around me. Dripping red oil, rust and decay, cracks and ice. Even people were affected, if what had happened with my dad and the police officer was any indication. That was what must have happened at school, leaving it empty and turning Emma and the rest into demons. I really hoped that was the case.

More happily, I found that I could turn it off. By clearing my mind, deliberately thinking of nothing, I could return to the normal world. I went back and forth, again and again, each time terrified that it wouldn't work. It had worked this morning, too. I tried it just after waking up. It was almost like an addiction, now, each switch confirming I wasn't crazy.

I couldn't be crazy. Madness wouldn't be under my control like this. Mad people couldn't just decide to be sane again when they felt like it, could they?

That's what I wanted to believe, anyway, as I stared into this strange other place. Here, my room was a cell, bare concrete walls and cold floors. I tried not to look at the black-red oil which soaked my mattress, pooling beneath the bed or the angry marks in the walls, or… well, there weren't too many safe places to look, really. The small pile of books from home seemed normal, a small flash of colour and familiarity compared to the icy red bareness.

When I looked closer, though, I found that even my books weren't completely unchanged by the madness-vision. The colours weren't quite how they should be, and the less said about what had happened to the cover art, the better. I opened the top one, and was presented with the word

_LONELINESS_

written in block capitals on the inside jacket. In my handwriting. I hadn't written it there. Did I want to turn the page? See if there were any other alterations?

No, but I did anyway.

_CHAPTER 1:  
MY LIFE IS A PRISON AND THIS IS THE WINDOW  
THROUGH WHICH I WATCH THE BIRDS_

I closed the book quite firmly, and refocused my attention on the real world for good measure. I could check that I hadn't scribbled nonsense in capitals over the inside of the book, but I didn't feel like doing that right now. One thing at a time. I thought about getting dressed, and felt a bit stupid immediately afterwards. It was going to be pyjamas all day, every day while I was here.

Still.

Whatever had happened to me at school, I had control over it now. I could see things about the world which weren't obvious from the normal viewpoint. Clues and hints. Psychic impressions, maybe, left in that other place.

Wait, no. I should capitalise it. Capitalisation is important. The Other Place. It makes it sound more reasonable, in a sort of meaningful way. 'I can see into the Other Place'. 'The Other Place reveals its secrets to me'. 'Surrender, criminal, lest I show you the horrors of the Other Place'. Yes. That sounded a lot more like something I could say without sounding all pathetic and crazy.

Wait. Maybe I should translate it into another language. That'd make it even more impressive. Hmm. I would need to go check Google Translate and see how to say 'Other Place' or 'Other World' or something like that in a bunch of languages. Or maybe I'd need to get a dictionary out, because clearly older languages would sound even more impressive. Something like Latin or Greek or Aramaic.

They probably didn't have an English-to-Aramaic dictionary in the library in here, though. They might have English-to-Latin, though. Probably not.

So did that mean I was a cape? I guess it did. Sure, I didn't actually have a cape, and to all other perspectives I was a suicide-case in a mental health ward rather than a superhero. But some of the first capes were thought to be crazy, up until they started shooting laser beams from their eyes. If the past couple of weeks had taught me anything, it was how many things were just a matter of perspective.

It wasn't like they'd let me out, if I told the staff here. Oh great, Taylor. So you say you can see a crazy-sounding rusted world, and that's your superpower? Mmm hmm. Can you prove it?

Something told me that they probably wouldn't accept a 'trust me' on faith. Other girls had probably tried that too.

Even if I could prove I'd become a parahuman, that would just mean the whole hospital would know who I was. There was a reason most capes - the parahumans who did crime fighting and the like - kept their identity secret. A group called New Wave had gone public with their identities about ten years ago, and it hadn't gone too well for them. Sure, you had a fair amount of Thinkers and Tinkers who had various corporate or government jobs, but once your name was out, there was no way back.

All I could do was wait it out until they decided I wasn't going to throw myself off the edge of the Docks.

Until then, I'd have to spend my time experimenting more with my crazy-sight. Perhaps I could get some more control over it, so I didn't terrify myself every time my mind drifted. I'd also like to work out how much information it could give me. Sure, I could get some vague hints, but I hadn't needed to see him as a burning demon-thing to know my dad had been angry. 'Seeing into a nightmare world' wasn't the most glamorous of powers if it didn't do anything really useful.

The other thing that was worrying me was that demon-monster I'd seen there. Sure, that might just have been a twisted version of Emma and the rest, but I wasn't totally sure. I really hoped it didn't turn out that being able to see into the Other Place made monsters come after me. Was it actually another place I was seeing, with its own horrible inhabitants, or just my mind twisting what was there? I wasn't completely sure, so I decided to expect monsters until proven otherwise.

I had no idea how long I'd be in here, but at least I had a list of things to do. Keeping productive would hopefully stop me from actually going crazy.

1\. Learn to better control my new power.  
2\. See if there were any really useful things that I could use it for, one way or another.  
3\. Don't get eaten by monsters that live in the Other Place.  
3a. Find out if there were any monsters which live in the Other Place, as long as doing so doesn't break 3.

After some thought, I added another four items to the mental list.

4\. Have breakfast.  
5\. See if I could get some Tylenol for my headache.  
5a. Make sure they didn't think I was trying to kill myself with it.  
6\. Convince people that I wasn't crazy.  
7\. Get started on that exercise regime I'd kept promising myself I'd do. It might help me run away from something which threatened 3, if nothing else.

A little bit of me understood that I was rationalising, breaking down my stress and horror into little pieces I could manage and contain. The rest of me didn't care what I was doing, so long as it helped me ignore the fact that I was in a mental hospital and probably wouldn't get out for weeks. At least.

I rubbed my eyes. I was feeling exhausted. I wouldn't go back to sleep, though. I turned on the television, which was still on a news channel. It was about half-seven, and the newsreader spent some time excitedly discussing some celebrity who'd been hospitalised overnight, before going into piece on poverty in New York.

Of course that's what the news cares about more. After all, it's not like a pop-star overdoses every day. It's more of a weekly thing. And everyone knows that poor people aren't news. They're olds.

The news wasn't going to stop me from falling asleep, so I instead considered my options. I could start seeing what I could do in here to try to keep fit. I couldn't do push-ups, or anything which would involve putting weight on my hands. That would hurt too much. There wasn't room to run, either. I could jog on the spot, but I was only wearing slippers and the floor was hard and cold. What else did people who exercised do which wouldn't involve my hands? Star-jumps? Sit-ups? I managed three of the latter, lying on the plastic-coated floor, before I collapsed down. My stomach muscles were aching and I was feeling limp.

Hopefully that was just a symptom of the cold I'd picked up. If I couldn't even manage four sit-ups, the time in a hospital bed had left me a mess. Maybe I should wait until I got better before trying to start this thing.

No. I wouldn't put it off. I had said I was going to start this, so I was going to do it. I managed two more, and forced myself to get up and stretch. Perhaps I should ask if there was a gym or something like that here next time I saw the supervisor, Hannah.

I suddenly shivered, ice cold creeping into my bones as the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. The sound of the television became muted and detached. I could still hear it perfectly clearly, but it now felt like it was a loud noise coming from a long way away. There was an iron hint of blood in every breath I took. I clenched my jaw and balled my hands into fists, feeling them ache.

I could feel the Other Place, feel it in the chill and in the ache in my hands. It was almost as if it was calling to me. It wanted me to look into it. Or maybe I wanted to look into it. I wasn't quite sure how I felt. Regardless, I tried to stay strong. I screwed my eyes shut, tried to keep my mind empty, and tried to not think of anything at all. But my curiosity got the better of me, and I peeked.

There was something in the room with me. It wasn't a person. It wasn't even a mimicry of a person, like the empty doll that had replaced the cop. It was a white mist or smoke floating around where I'd put my books. It had a faint tinge to it – sometimes lavender, sometimes a very pale green or blue. It didn't look like it belonged in the grey and rust and black-red oil of the reflection of my room. And there was something inside the smoke. I could see glimpses of something moving in it.

It didn't look very human.

I squeaked, gulping in a breath, and fell over back onto my bed. Breath coming quickly, I tried to pretend to be calm. "Okay, l-looks like I'm too weak to do those s-sit ups," I stammered, trying to keep it in the corner of my eye. If I pretended I was just tired and hadn't seen it, maybe it would ignore me.

Was it alive? Aware? I wasn't sure. It had no face or features that I could see, so I couldn't tell if it was looking at me. It didn't move any closer to me or respond at all. I stared at it and watched it flow over my things. Outrage built in my heart, but that was dampened by the feeling of the cold, clinging black-red oil around my feet. Glancing up, I could see the marks on the walls creeping slowly. If you've seen honey ooze from a knife, you know what it looked like. Only this oil was moving along the walls, rather than down. It was twisting and twirling, like it was trying to spell something out, but I couldn't read it even if I'd wanted to.

There was _something _in my room. Something I couldn't see normally, something which made me feel cold even colder than usual in the Other Place.

I tried not to laugh at the television screen, which was still trying to show the news under the lipstick scribbled all over it. I don't know why, but I was finding that hilariously funny. It was probably that which brought me back from the edge of hysteria. Laughing madly at a news report on – I squinted – probably the weather wouldn't be too good for anyone listening in. It wasn't even like it was on a rollerskating hamster or something which was legitimately funny.

If I got into the habit of watching comedy channels I could get away with it, a cold part of my brain noted. And it also noted that I could hear noise outside the room, so I should just refocus on the real world and ignore the cold presence entirely.

I kind of wanted to hide my head under the covers. But I forced myself to ignore the Other Place, and walk towards the mist, like a girl perfectly innocently going to pick up one of her books and read it. Had the books faded in colour? I wasn't sure. No, it was probably just the light. It was morning now, and the light coming in through window suggested it was going to be a clearer day.

The cold feeling vanished before I even reached the impromptu library, and I peeked to confirm that the mist and the thing inside was gone too. It was. Picking up a randomly chosen book, I settled down on my bed and waited for the start of my first full day in a madhouse.


	7. Chrysalis 1-07

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 1.07**

"Coffee? Hot chocolate? It's only powdered stuff, I'm sorry."

I shrugged. "Hot chocolate," I said, crossing my legs and tucking my hands up into my sleeves. I was sitting in Hannah's office, waiting as she fussed over a kettle on the side. She had come to my room fairly early this morning, asking to see me in her office.

"Anyway, I thought we could get some of the basic paperwork and set-up things that I meant to do last night done now, so I can introduce you to the other girls in Wilson at breakfast," she said. She poured hot water into a pair of chipped mugs she had spooned granules into. "Breakfast starts at eight, and goes on until half-nine. Aaand..." she tapped at the computer, "okay, no messages. Where was I? So, how are you feeling this morning, Taylor?" she asked, putting the cup in front of me on the desk.

I decided honesty was the best recourse. It gave me more room to lie later if I was open now. "Bunged up and sniffly, and kind of headachey," I said. "I think I must have caught a cold in the hospital."

"We'll have to stop by the pharmacy to get you something for that later," she said. "But apart from that you're not feeling too bad? Are you homesick?"

I considered. "I don't think so," I said. "I mean, I was in hospital for a while before this, and-"I trailed off. I did miss my room. I did miss my dad. And I certainly missed not being in sterile cold hospital environments. "I would like to be home," I admitted, "but I'm not sure if that's homesickness."

"That's only natural," she said, as she poured three sachets of sweetener into her drink. "Yes, I'm terrible," she said with a wry smile when she saw me looking. She was clearly inviting me to share in her self-depreciation, and I smiled back. "They say that sweetener exists for people who don't like coffee," she added. "Me, I think I just like sweet things. Don't follow my example. It's terrible for you."

I peeked into her mug. Yes, she had black coffee, in case the smell hadn't been enough. She looked exhausted under the too-thick makeup, I thought critically. I wasn't getting proper sleep because of nightmares, but she looked barely better than I felt.

Her fingers clacked away on her keyboard as I considered my options. I took a sip of the watery hot chocolate, and made sure to swallow it. I carefully put my cup down on the desk in front of me. If I was going to do this, I would have to make sure I didn't scream or act strangely. I couldn't let what I was about to see affect me, not in front of a person who could have them thinking I was completely gaga.

I closed my eyes and concentrated.

"Tired?" she asked, her voice shifting to an unnatural rasp mid-way through.

Eyes still shut, I inhaled. The room smelt of stifling warmth and bitterness and just a tinge of rust. It was a relief, compared to the stink of blood that normally filled my nostrils whenever I did this.

"A bit tired," I said, trying to keep my voice level. "I haven't been sleeping well since… that. The thing that happened."

I opened my eyes a crack, ready to shut my eyes again if I needed to.

In the Other Place, she looked worse. Her skin was corpse-grey. It was torn in places, revealing raw flesh, while the bits which remained had the soft, shrivelled texture of an apple left in the sun for too long. Some kind of bone spike protruded from her ribcage, around where the heart should be, and something like old dried blood or rust crusted that entire side of her chest. Dark, waxy tar seeped from both eyes. What little hair remained dangled from her scalp in straggly clumps. She looked tired and diseased, she looked like she'd died but forgotten to stop moving, but above all she looked _old_.

"Is there, uh, somewhere I could exercise here?" I asked, trying to fight back a sudden nausea. "It's just, I'm feeling really out of shape after spending so much time being ill."

How old was she really? If the monster-selves I saw in the Other Place were linked in some way to the real person, then why would she appear so old and dead? I mean, my dad had been replaced by a burning figure, and he'd certainly been furious, and the cop probably hadn't really cared in the first place so it made sense she was a hollow doll. But what did this mean for her? Or was I reading it wrong?

I needed to find out more.

I relaxed, and let the paint creep back over the walls, concealing the burn marks and the graffiti. It was with no small relief that I looked back at the not-ancient-and-dead face of Hannah. She'd said something, I realised. "I'm sorry, what was that?" I said.

"I said, yes, there's a small gym which backs onto an exercise yard," she repeated. "There's also exercise sessions held, which you can sign up for. Are you feeling already? You just went a bit… vague."

"I just zoned out," I said, adding, "I'm just a bit tired."

"Do you have any preference to the gender of your psychologist?" Her fingers hovered apprehensively over her keyboard.

I thought. "I don't think so," I said.

She looked relieved. "Right, I'll put you down for Dr. Vanderburg , then. He has more free slots, so you'll be able to see him more and at the same time each day." She cleared her throat. "I don't know if you know, but we try to keep our patients on a proper schedule here. Just leaving people alone in their rooms doesn't help them get better. Obviously it's not as rigid as school, but it's still healthy to have a structure to the day. Do you see what I mean?"

I nodded. "Yes." I had ended up very bored in hospital. I coughed. "Are there any arrangements to let me keep up with schoolwork?" I sighed, my hands unconsciously going to my wrists. "Of course, considering everything, I'm not sure this place would trust me with a pencil."

I had made sure to keep my eyes on her expression, and she did wince slightly at that. She hastened to reassure me that there were systems in place to help me keep up with my education. Then followed a short talk, all about how I was here 'to get better' and how they were here to help me. I'd heard it before. More useful was the fact that I got a timetable. And then it was off to breakfast.

Walking down the corridors behind Hannah, I think I might have spent almost as much time looking at the Other Place as I did at my actual surroundings. I now had two worlds to explore when I got used to this place, even if one was pretty horrifying. I was also eager to experiment – this was the first chance I'd had to get a look at different places through the lens of my power. As far as I could tell, the geography of the Other Place seemed to mostly match up with the normal world. Variations were rare but noticeable, like walls that had been oddly warped or doors that were an entirely different shape.

I saw a door hanging off its hinges, and wondered what would happen if I tried to walk through it. How would I interact with something that was empty space in the Other Place, but solid wood in the real world? If I'd tried to touch my dad while he was that angry fire-thing, would I have burned? I didn't have a chance to test any of these ponderings. Hannah walked briskly, and I was only wearing the plimsoll-like shoes they'd given me.

There were butterflies painted on the walls of the canteen. It only made things look even more like a junior school. In the Other Place, the butterflies were still there, but they glowed. Luminescent paint sat on the bare concrete walls like oil on water, shimmering like an insect's carapace or a petrol spill. What made them so different from everything else?

The room was about half-full. I could only tell this with difficulty, because a thick multi-coloured mist hung around head height. It kind of looked like a psychedelic take on a seedy Prohibition bar from a film. An old film, too – the colours were mostly washed out. They flared vibrantly every so often, but only briefly and only out of the corner of my eye. It was vaguely nauseating. I suppressed a shudder at the sight of the monstrous forms that swirled through the mist, and let my sight return to normalcy. In the real world, the entire room was painted like it was outside, with a blue ceiling and high green 'grass' on the walls. The butterflies weren't the only animals, either. There were ladybirds and regular birds and a large cat.

I didn't like the cat. He was smiling, which made him look unhealthily like the Cheshire cat. That was an association I didn't want. My Wonderland was already less pleasant than Alice's.

Still, a little bit of me couldn't help but feel cheered up by the sight of the colour in the Other Place. At least the butterflies didn't radiate cloying cold despair like the black-red oil in my room, or make me feel sick like the coloured fog. They were a bit hopeful, if only in a watery, thin, weak way.

She led me over to a table where four other girls were seated. They all looked to be within a few years of my age. Clearly Wilson was a place of troubled pubescent girls. Hannah gave me a brittle smile. "Well, I'd hoped to introduce you to everyone yesterday," she said, "but Chloe can't be with us right now. Hopefully, she'll be well enough to see people soon," she pushed on, "so I'll just introduce you to everyone else for now . Good morning."

"Morning," said a mousy-haired girl, toying with her bowl of cereal with a plastic spoon.

"Samantha, Leah, Emily, Kirsty. This is Taylor," Hannah said, gesturing toward each of the girls in turn and then me. "She'll be in room five for a while. She just arrived yesterday evening."

"So where's Chloe?" one of them – Leah – asked. Too thin. That was my first thought. And my second, if you count 'anorexic' as being the same thought dressed up in more complicated words. Leah was pale, large-eyed, and looked like she could have been pretty if she wasn't doing her best to impersonate a twig.

"She's, uh, not going to be around for a while," Hannah said awkwardly. "She's going back to the hospital."

There was a painful silence. "But she'd seemed better," Samantha said, playing with one lank mousy brown lock with a finger. I noticed the fact that she was wearing similar wrist bands to me, and I noticed her noticing mine. "She said she was feeling better on the new meds."

"She'd had… she has bad reactions to some of that stuff," Emily said. She looked… well, there wasn't anything obviously wrong with her. "That just sucks. Shit. Is she going to be…"

Hannah bit her lip. "They think she'll pull through," she said. She sounded slightly guarded to me.

I'd been trying to hold off from paying too much attention to Kirsty, because she was a mess. There were puffy red scars on her hands and face – ones much deeper than mine. The ones on my face were just slightly pink, and the doctors had said that they'd fade. Hers – I thought someone had taken a knife to her, cutting deep into her cheeks and around the edge of her mouth, and they looked old enough that they were as good as they were going to get. She was shrinking away from me, and from what I could read of her expression she was staring at my hands and face. There was almost certainly a story there, and just as certainly I probably didn't want to know it. Hannah seemed to have noticed the way Kirsty was acting too, because she cleared her throat.

"But yes!" she said, with false brightness. "Everyone, Taylor. Taylor, everyone."

"Hi," I said awkwardly. I'd never been very good with first impressions, or any kind of impressions, really, and this was more difficult than most. How was I meant to talk to them? 'So, how are you crazy? Me, I get traumatic flashbacks and tried to kill myself when I got locked in a locker'. Wonderful conversational ice-breaker, I don't think.

"I hear voices when I don't take my meds," Emily said, rolling her eyes. "I'll let the others introduce themselves."

I worked my jaw silently before settling on an appropriate reply. "Um.".

"I would _slap _you if I wouldn't get in trouble for that," Samantha hissed at her. "Idiot. Call me Sam," she told me. "I mean that." She massaged the back of her neck. "Look what you did," she told Emily. "I was going to ask her about… like, what bands she likes and you've just gone and weirded her out."

"I don't really like bands," I said without thinking. That produced some smiles.

"Get used to being bored here, then," Leah advised. "If you get to like the radio stations the TVs pick up, it makes stuff much easier."

They looked rich, I noted to myself wryly. I wasn't entirely surprised. I'd picked up enough from my dad to guess that we couldn't have afforded to send me to a place like this if it wasn't for my school graciously footing the bill. We weren't exactly poor, but this place wouldn't be cheap, and only one person in the house was earning any money. The other girls here probably had more in common with Emma or Madison than me. That wasn't exactly fair to them, but I wasn't feeling too fair-minded right now.

I bit my lip, and mentally shook myself. No. I shouldn't think like that. Urgh, this was the most honest attempt at a normal conversation with a girl my age I'd had in _months_. I shouldn't go into this expecting them to target me. They had more than enough problems of their own. They were more likely to be the victims of girls like Emma and Sophia than part of their fanclub.

My eyes drifted over to Kirsty and those horrifying scars. She still hadn't said a word.

Did I want to know?

I concentrated, and shifted my senses to the Other Place. I really wished I hadn't. If Leah was too thin in reality, in the Other Place she was even worse. She had no eyes, no ears, nothing but a mouth which took up all the space where her face should be. Her skin was shockingly pale, stretched drum-tight over visible stick-bones and a stomach that bulged grotesquely. Her skull was monstrously oversized, and wobbled precariously on a neck as thin as a Coke bottle, like some terrifying bobblehead doll.

Samantha – Sam – looked more human, but her skin was split into patches of burned body and frozen flesh, greying ash falling from iced-over eye sockets. Even as I watched, the ice spread, creeping out from her slashed-open wrists. Emily twisted and thrashed when I wasn't looking at her. Her flesh crept and crawled in a way that reminded me of the locker and left me feeling sick. I thought I could hear whispers there, too.

It turns out I didn't want to know about Kirsty. I didn't want to know that of all the people in the room, she looked almost exactly the same in the Other Place. The same pale, flinching expression of worry about everyone and everything. The same livid scars. Only one thing had changed about her, and that was how her white pyjama top was stained with blood. They spelt out three words, stacked on top of each other.

_S IX  
S IX  
S IX_

Wow, I thought to myself in numbed shock. It's a good job you're not crazy, Taylor Hebert. A crazy person would freak out over someone who looked pretty normal in a freaky madness vision and had the Number of the Beast glaring out from her top. A crazy person would start pointing her finger at the girl sitting across from her and screaming about the Antichrist. A crazy person would start babbling. But that would be crazy. And so you won't do that, will you? Because you're not crazy.

It was just as well I'd drilled that into myself before looking into the Other Place. It was becoming my mantra, these days. I screwed my eyes shut again, thinking of nothing at all, and reminded myself that I was sane. When I looked around the table again, the world had joined me.

I really wished I had some nice clean Thinker power which just told me what I wanted to know without having to see these things. Were there any other parahumans who had powers like this? I would need to see if I could get internet access here. I needed to learn more about how powers worked, and see how other people used them.

Hannah tapped me on the shoulder. "Do you want to go and get some cereal? I just need to have a few words with Emily."

I drifted off towards the table where the little boxes of cereal and the milk were laid out, with a bulky woman watching over them. I was trying my best to avoid thinking of what I'd seen. I didn't want to slip into the Other Place again. I just needed some time. Time to think. But at least they'd tried to talk with me. And I was going to try to talk back. I wasn't going to run and hide. Hah. This was almost a fresh start, in a way. At least I'd be believed if anyone did bully me. And I'd be out of here fairly soon, so I just had to be pleasant enough.

A sudden thought struck me, as I was pouring out the milk, and I shivered. I hadn't really checked, had I?

What did _I _look like in the Other Place?


	8. Chrysalis 1-08

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 1.08**

I leant on the counter, staring at myself in the mirror. Whoever designed the ladies' bathrooms had focussed on making them easy to scrub rather than easy on the eyes, and they stank of chlorine, but at least they were clean. The harsh whiteness was a relief, in its way. It was a reassuring contrast to the dripping, stained and cracked surfaces of the last bathroom I'd been in, the first time I'd looked into the Other Place.

That relief was too shallow to really comfort me. I knew, now, how close that weirdness actually was. Detergent was no defence against it. The Other Place was out there, lurking behind my eyes. All it would take was for me to look into it and I'd see rot and filth and worse things all around me. My mind was already running through possibilities, wildly speculating about what I might see in this ever-so-clean bathroom, scrubbed down so carefully, so recently. What might some crazy person have done, here? Did I really want to see?

Yes, that was clearly why I was prevaricating. I wasn't just trying to chicken out of seeing what I looked like in the Other Place.

An older woman came out of one of the cubicles, and left without washing her hands. I shuddered in disgust, and then closed my eyes. Well, here went nothing. Time to see what I looked like in a mirror darkly. After a moment's hesitation, I shifted my head slightly, so I wasn't directly facing myself. It'd probably be better to ease myself in to looking at myself.

I cracked open my eyes and saw the lipstick scrawled on the mirror. That seemed to be one of the marker signs of the Other Place. I couldn't read the writing, if it even meant anything. Readying myself to turn, I took a deep breath and instantly gagged, tasting bile and the morning's cereal. The smell was indescribable. There was rot, death, sick, shit, ammonia, and that was just a small selection from the nasal cacophony. The once-white walls were encrusted with _organicness_, and black-red oil pooled on the floor in a shape like a chalk outline of a corpse. I could feel the misery and pain _radiating _from it like heat, and I shuddered, a horrible suspicion dawning on me as to what the red-black oil meant.

I shuddered, the meaning of the red-black oil dawning on me. Had someone died right here? Had someone killed themselves in _my room_? Or tried to? My skin crawled as I remembered how the black-red oil covered the bed and spilled down onto the floor. Did that mean they'd done it on the bed where I slept?

My stomach churned, and I dashed for a cubicle, retching into the toilet. I emptied about half of my breakfast into the bowl, which hardly made it any more filthy. Refocusing on the real world, which at least smelt more pleasant, I retched some more. The rest of my food stayed down, but I wasn't feeling too good.

Memo to self; in the future I would not use my powers in toilets. Not if I could avoid it.

It was probably just sheer stubborn spite which forced me back to the mirror, wiping my mouth. At least if I found out what I looked like here, I wouldn't need to do it again. Since I'd been sick already, I had less to throw up if I turned out to be a monster. I didn't think I'd looked very monstrous in the brief glance I got while gagging on my cereal.

This time, I held my nose, and looked straight ahead, avoiding the floor.

Again, the lipstick appeared from nowhere. Holding my breath, I peered at my reflection. A girl with lank, mussed curly brown hair and dark bags under her eyes gazed back. That was a relief, at least. I looked like myself. I breathed out a sign of relief, and regretted it. I coughed, spluttering on the stench, and the motion revealed the nasty-looking scab just under my collar.

My eyes widened, and I tugged the neck of my top down slightly. Yes, there was a big brown scab on the left side. And another one on the right. And several vicious ones on my arms and even my hands – my _unbandaged _hands. Running my hands down my front, I could feel more under my clothing. I must look like I'd fallen on broken-

Ah. The nails. Yes. I shuddered as I thought back to that agony. So in the Other Place, I was still scarred by what I'd done to get those insects out of me. That made sense. That had been the first time I'd seen the Other Place – when I had triggered.

But the thing was, as scabs, they looked about the right age. So did that mean that they were healing? That would be something to look for, I thought, peering closer at myself.

Wait a moment. My reflection wasn't fuzzy at all. I was short-sighted, and my eyesight was bad enough that it was more convenient for me to just wear glasses all the time, but they'd been taken away at the entrance. They counted as a potential hazard, apparently, so I had an appointment to get a pair of 'safety' glasses which probably wouldn't have the best lenses for me, but would do. Even without them, I could see perfectly well in the Other Place. I'd been walking around all day, switching between reality and the Other Place, and I hadn't noticed at all.

Right now, of course, I could have done with a bit of blurriness.

With a sigh of relief, I forced my senses back to reality. I permitted myself a small smile. I was getting the hang of it. I hadn't needed to close my eyes this time, I thought, rubbing my left collarbone where the scab had been. I could still almost feel it. And then pain spiked through my hands as my damaged fingers protested. That was something I hadn't missed.

Shaking my head, I went and flushed the toilet I'd been sick in, and went to wash my hands. I had been sweating. I should probably wash my face before I left. I could see to my hair at the same time, which was a mess. I promised myself that I wasn't going to sink into despair. I'd pay attention to my appearance while I was here. Not because I was vain, of course, but because if I looked normal and healthy and like I was caring about how I looked – but not too much – then the psychiatrists would have less reason to wrongly believe that I was suicidal.

I averted my eyes as I turned on the tap in the bathroom. I let it run and stared up at the ceiling, making sure I didn't catch the flow out of the corner of my eye. By the time I looked back, any rust there may have been in the water had long since gone, and I breathed out a sigh of relief.

Despite the fact that I'd put it to the warmest temperature I could, the flow was still lukewarm at best. That produced a spasm of worry, before I thought back to the school I'd gone to when I was a little girl. The taps there had never been able to run too hot either. I guessed this was another sign of how this place made us all into children.

So I'd promised myself I'd look pretty as well as shape up? Something told me that mental health wards would never take off as a makeover place, I thought, wincing as I tried to wash what bits of my hands I could without getting the dressings wet.

Then I went and told Hannah that I'd been sick. "It's just nerves, I think," I said, looking her straight in the eye and trying not to blink. "I sometimes get a bit queasy when I feel nervous." I swallowed. "Uh, and given what I just ate came back up, is there any toast or something like that? Something which doesn't have milk in it." I gave a wry smile. "I don't think I can face the taste again."

The toast was pretty good, and I ate four slices under Hannah's watchful eye which seemed to leave her satisfied. Oh, I realised. I hoped she didn't suspect I was bulimic. I should avoid going to the bathrooms for several hours, so she was satisfied I wasn't about to throw it up. It was possible she was just worried about the fact that I'd been ill, but acting in a way to minimise the chance that she might think I wasn't right in the head couldn't be a bad idea.

Well, in moderation. If I went too far, I might get paranoid about looking crazy, and that would only end in tears.

My first appointment with my assigned psychiatrist wasn't until the afternoon, and so I had a few hours to kill. I awkwardly and poorly tried to talk with the other girls in Wilson. It was a conversation which involved a lot of dancing around the point, but I did manage to find out what the protocol for getting internet access was. Sam also asked me if I wanted to come to one of the meditation classes which they ran.

"It's from eleven to twelve," she said, "and it's something to do. I mean, in a strict sense it's kinda boring, but it's a relaxing kind of boring. And I think it does kind of help. I mean, the breathing stuff helps you calm down when you get a bit wobbly, so that's worth it alone." Then she went off for blood tests, leaving me alone with Leah, who was reading a plain-covered book. She was very evasive about what it was about, and I didn't care enough to push her on its contents.

I entertained myself by reading a magazine left lying around, and put my name down for the meditation class and the waiting list for computer access. There was a long list of conditions and reminders that it was a privilege, not a right, and that our communications would be monitored, and so on and so forth. Well, I didn't care about that. I was almost certain that there would be an unrestricted wiki on parahumans out there. It wasn't like I was trying to look for anything objectionable. I just wanted information.

Damn. If only I had known Kirsty's surname. I could have googled it to see what might have come up about her. She had looked pretty normal, too. The fact that we both had shared scars raised my suspicions. Did she have similar powers to me? That'd certainly be something which might get someone winding up in an asylum, if she'd let people know she saw monsters everywhere. What if she had the same thing, but couldn't turn it off? I'd go crazy if that happened to me. Wait, no, I realised, they'd be tracking my search history here, and I'd probably face some hard questions if I started googling other girls' names. Well, I'd just remember it for when I got out of here and see what I could get from the others.

I got my printed out slip of paper with my sign-in name and password. It would give me thirty minutes, which wasn't all that long. It would have to do. I could already see why I should behave here. Even half an hour of internet access was a precious link to the outside world that could be easily revoked.

I did the thing which probably anyone who has ever triggered and wondered what their power could do does. Which is to say, I went and flicked through the summaries for the Triumvirate. They were the big three parahumans, the ones that everyone secretly – and not so secretly – wanted to be like. And the ones I was pretty sure I was nothing like. I wasn't like Legend or any of the other Legend-alikes. I couldn't fly, or project energy, or make forcefields or anything cool or flashy. Brockton Bay had New Wave, an entire team who pretty much all had powers like that. I remembered that I needed to see if I could find out who the white-glowing lady I'd seen from my hospital room was. Not now. Anyway, I could rule out being like that.

Then you had your Alexandria packages, like… uh, Alexandria, and the various 'knock-offs' out there, like Caestus Pacis, one of the second tier of Protectorate capes operating out of Washington DC along with Justice, who combined that with some kind of incendiary blaster skill. Then there was the lengthy disambiguation page for 'Heracles – see also Hercules' with about seven heroes listed, and some either self-aware or congenitally unimaginative Australian hero calling himself Superbrick. Oh, huh, no, he did in fact appear to be made of bricks, I realised when I found a picture of him. Weird.

I sighed. I certainly wasn't an Alexandria or Legend, given the fact I couldn't fly, punch down buildings, or fire lasers from my hands. And as for having powers like Eidolon's, and his capacity to do pretty much anything – I closed the tab, because it was depressing me. That wasn't the sensible way to get as much information as possible in thirty minutes, and I'd already used up five.

I went straight to the Classifications page, because that would be the fastest way to narrow down people with similar powers and what they could do. I was sure there probably were people out there who would say that you should learn how your powers work yourself and it's some kind of moral weakness to just try to find a list of everyone else whose powers sound even a little similar and then copy them, but they could shut up. They probably had nice easy powers which let them know immediately that they were super-strong, could fly, and were nearly invulnerable. They didn't have to put up with their main power being 'seeing things which weren't there'.

I could immediately rule out a bunch of classifications. Mover? No, I didn't seem to be physically better in any way. Blaster? No. Striker? No sign of contact-based powers. I could try seeing if I could show other people the Other Place by touching them, but that would only be a secondary power. Brute? Not a chance. Trump? How would I even tell? Tinker? No sign of any gifts with technology, and it didn't logically flow from what I knew I could do. Master? No indication of that, though in fairness the Other Place was a creepy hell dimension, and maybe I could make monsters as well as seeing them? On the other hand, maybe those monsters would eat me. That wasn't a field for experimentation without precautions.

Breaker, Shaker, Stranger or Changer? Maybe? The Other Place did seem to be sort of another world where things worked differently, and maybe, depending on how my power worked, I was changing how my eyes worked to be able to see it. They'd be a lower priority for experimentation, but they weren't out of the question. Maybe I could turn myself into a monster from the Other Place or step out of normal reality entirely – which meant I should also include Mover in my list of prospects and I _really _shouldn't even think a little bit of trying this in public. Not until I had confirmed that I wouldn't turn into some big-eyed spider-legged monster who'd terrify the other patients.

Aware of the fact that I was running low on time, I decided to focus on Thinkers. 'Often show abilities related to planning, information acquisition and cognitive or sensory enhancement,' the page on them said, and that fit the things I saw in the Other Place to a tee.

Unfortunately, there was a disgraceful lack of attention given to the capes with less impressi- more covert powers. Their wiki pages were much shorter, _and _usually came with fewer pictures. That didn't look good for any future cape career I might have. Didn't look like I would be getting my own action figure.

Probably for the best. What would it say when you pressed the button on its back? 'Someone died here?' Or maybe 'Everyone around me looks like monsters'. Maybe it would just scream, and then make an excuse about how it wasn't crazy.

Back in the here-and-now, of course, it meant that I had a lot less information to help me work out what my power did. I seemed to have some kind of... clairvoyance, I guessed the word was. Some kind of reading ability. I could see into the Other Place, and in the Other Place things were all allegorical. And also horrible. But in the Thinkers category, a lot more of the cape entries were stubs, and even the ones who had a proper page were very unhelpful.

Take Hourglass, a cape operating out of Miami and according to the wiki a known rival of Florida Man. He could stop time, and when time was stopped he was apparently frozen, but displayed 'cognitive and sensory enhancements including perception of short wavelength electromagnetic radiation and the ability to prepare actions in advance'. That didn't help at all when I was trying to work out what it was like being him. There was a fairly new cape marked as Thinker/Trump, called Flashside, who could apparently 'spontaneously develop new skills by minor alterations to her personal timeline'. How did it _feel_ to use that power? What were the limitations on what she could do? It made sense to not list these things online where anyone could get to them, but I _was_ anyone and I wanted to get to them. The villain entries were even less helpful. Another cape operating in Brockton Bay was a petty villain called Tattletale, whose power was just described as 'enhanced analytical ability'. That was it. I could understand the articles on criminals being shorter, but that was ridiculous compared to what the more overt villains like Lung got.

An untrusting mind might even suspect that the smart people – which was to say, the people whose power category was 'Thinker' – tended to give much fewer details about what they could and couldn't do. So, naturally I suspected that.

After much futile searching, I managed to find a half-way useful page on Psychometric Powers. That was the point when the timer ran out, and I was kicked off back to the login screen. I bit my lip in frustration, and then rose to let the next person on, who was already hovering behind me. Shaking my head, I checked the clock and went to get to a drink of water. The meditation session was in quarter of an hour, and – I yawned – my lack of sleep was catching up with me. I was probably going to fall asleep in the middle of it.

I would try not to, though. I needed to learn to calm my breathing and my everything else when I saw things that reminded me of the locker. If increased calmness helped me avoid panicking the next time the Other Place upped the ante on horribleness, all the better. I wasn't sure they really planned to help me get better at seeing things which other people would argue weren't there, but I'd take all the help I could get.

The man leading the group spent some time plugging in and setting up his CD player, and then put on slow, soft music. After dimming the lights, he began to explain in a soft voice how we should breathe – inhaling for a count, holding it, and then letting it out. The music and the dim lighting and the way he sounded really didn't help. Given how little sleep I had been getting, I was dozing off where I sat fairly quickly. I supposed that was a sign that I was relaxed, which meant the entire exercise was a partial success.

The sound of someone fidgeting behind me half-woke me, and I cracked an eye open. I'd noticed that some places were worse than others in the Other Place. The toilets and my room were awful, while the cafeteria hadn't been terrible. This room was calm, quiet, and everyone around me looked fairly relaxed. If I took a peek at its reflection, I could check my theory that the emotions that had been felt in a room affected how it appeared to me.

I didn't know why I kept on looking into that place, when so much of what I saw was disgusting or even made me physically ill. Simple curiosity wasn't enough, surely? Maybe it was just that I really wanted to be special. This thing, this talent was _mine_, and no one else could take it away.

Still, regardless of why, I focussed and thought of it. I was right. Yes, the walls were bare concrete, stripped of any paint, but that was all. There was almost no rust, and no blood or any of the black-red oil. A glance showed that my fellow attendees still had an edge of inhumanity to their features, but their monstrousness was muted, softened. Their calmness seemed to be influencing their appearance in the Other Place.

I frowned. That couldn't be right. Kirsty was the only other 'normal' person I'd seen in the Other Place, but she was clearly a nervous wreck and hadn't spoken a single word since I'd met her. She certainly wasn't right in the head. It didn't make sense that she looked normal when she _wasn't _normal. What was going on here?

At the front of the room, the man with wax-smoothed features sagging down his bones cleared his throat. "Remember," he repeated, a slight liquid quality the only thing that had changed about his voice in the Other Place, "cast away your problems. Don't think of them. Don't let them eat you up from the inside. Relax, and breathe."

Problems? I didn't have problems. But I'd learned to turn off my crazy-vision by emptying my mind. Maybe calm emptiness would be the best state of mind to try doing something more involved with the Other Place. Just something small, simple – that would be all I would need. I focussed on my breathing, and folded my hands in my lap. Breathe in. Breathe out. Be calm, Taylor. You just want to see if you can change things in the Other Place. Sure, part of that's because you read the article on Shakers and thought that sounded really cool, but that's not important right now. Breathe and focus.

I sneezed once, twice, and there was suddenly something inside and outside and separate and the same and countless other feelings I couldn't describe. But when I looked up, there was someone, something standing in front of me.

I swallowed hard.

The _thing _looked… well, it looked like me. That was the only way to describe it. But it was a me wrought in taffy, and stretched and drawn by the whims of a bored and sugar-hyped child. Fingers almost as long as forearms trailed along the floor, touching and feeling everything. An elongated nose – mine wasn't anywhere near that big! – sniffed the air. And two eyes the size of grapefruits bulged out of her warped skull, dilated pupils trying to stare at everything and anything.

And despite that, she still looked like me. And she sounded like me, breathed like me as she leaned in, snuffling. A finger that felt like an insect feeling out the shape of my face stroked my cheek, leaving my hair standing on end.

A whimper escaped my lips. I tried to suppress the noise, and stared at the monster, eyes watering.

It snuffled, and looked away from me. Half-drifting, as if it was suspended from strings, it picked its way across the floor to the nearest person on the next mat over. It reached out with its long fingers, and stroked her cheek. And then it snuffled again, nostrils flaring.

What had I just done? What was that thing? I clenched my jaw, and thought of nothing. But no, that wouldn't work! If I thought of nothing, I wouldn't be able to see the Other Place, and if I couldn't see the Other Place, I couldn't see if the thing was still there. Helplessly, I watched as it with almost child-like glee put both hands on Sam's head. What was it doing?

"No!" I blurted out loud, and it stopped, staring at me with its too-large eyes. "Don't! I mean it!"

The not-me spectre came apart like mist, which came rolling back in towards me. I inhaled sharply, and it crept in with the breath. I didn't breathe out, but there was no sign of anything else. I sighed in relief, and focussed back on the real world.

Everyone was staring at me.


	9. Chrysalis 1-09

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 1.09**

The ceiling fan spun lazily, a faint whine in the cluttered office. Every free surface was stacked with folders and loose sheaths of paper, and the old dented filing cabinets were bulging. The curtains of the ground-floor office were wide open, letting in the grey wintery light. My psychiatrist was looking at me questioningly, his pen hovering over his notepad.

"Oh, that?" I winced, an expression which hurt in itself. I had to stop doing that. You would think I'd have learned that the scabs on my face didn't like being moved, but apparently not. "I just dozed off in the meditation. And… well, I told you already that I was having nightmares, so-" I shrugged, trying to not look too affected. "Yes."

My assigned psychiatrist, whose desk declared he was called Dr. Erwin Vanderburg, nodded. "Well, that's understandable," he said, carefully, making a note on the paper before him. He had a faint accent, which I couldn't recognise. "And, mmm, you would say this has been going on for less than two weeks?"

"Less than two. I wasn't having nightmares before, because the painkillers I was on meant I wasn't dreaming." I shrugged. "Or didn't remember it, which is just as good."

"Yes, you mentioned that earlier," he said. "Hmm. Well, at the moment, after only one meeting I'm not prepared to prescribe you medication. I try to deal with things without immediately resorting to it." He tapped one finger against his lip. "We'll see how you're doing tomorrow, and whether you're feeling any better about being here. If you're still very nervous, or are sick again, we might look towards a short course of a very mild sedative. Just to help you get over the initial acclimation period to the new environment, and to calm those nerves." He smiled at me. "After all, if you're being sick because of homesickness, you're going to be feeling pretty miserable, right?"

"I suppose so," I said, trying to sound – well, I didn't know what the best emotion to convey was. I didn't want to sound enthusiastic, because who on earth sounded enthusiastic in here, but sounding reluctant or annoyed would just have him thinking I wasn't being cooperative. As a result, it just ended up coming out in a flat monotone. That probably wasn't the best, but it was done.

"I'm here to help you, Taylor," he said. "I can understand that you don't necessarily want to open up to me, but it'll be easier for both of us if you don't clam up whenever I try to engage with you. I'm on your side, remember?"

Well, that was a not-too-veiled threat, I thought darkly. Who would say that unless they wanted to raise the prospect of what would happen if he was not on my side?

"After all," he added, "considering some of the behaviour in your report... I'm talking about the incident with the nurse here, so-"

"To be fair," I said, blushing slightly, "that wasn't deliberate. I was having a nightmare and when I got woken up, I thought that the nurse was part of the dream. I just tried to-" I cleared my throat, "uh, stop her dragging me back to the locker."

"Yes, Taylor," he said, with almost insulting patience, "but you also headbutted her while screaming incoherently."

"I didn't mean to!" I protested. "I said sorry afterwards!" It was very unfair. When you're waking up from a nightmare, you shouldn't be held responsible for what you do. Especially if – as had been the case – what I now knew to be the Other Place had been bleeding into my dreams and the waking world.

Of course, I couldn't admit that in public, so I was just having to take my lumps for something which really hadn't been my fault.

"And as long as it doesn't happen again, everything will be fine. Especially for all the people who aren't being headbutted," he said, smiling at the last remark. He made another note on the paper before him, and then rose. He offered me his hand, and I shook it, not entirely sure why.

"Well, it was very nice meeting you for the first time, Taylor," he said. "I hope we can get along and you'll feel more comfortable opening up to me later. I can tell that you don't want to be in here, and that's entirely understandable. There are worse places out there, but no one in their right mind would want to be in a psychiatric hospital."

I couldn't help but smile, and that produced a slightly wry grin from him. "That's the first smile I've got out of you all the session," he said. "Your sense of humour's a bit dark, isn't it?"

"I think you're better suited as a psychiatrist than a comedian," I told him.

"Touché. Well, uh…" he leaned back to check a calendar, "I'll have a schedule sent to your room for our meetings. I'm sorry, everything's a bit of a mess at the moment for the schedules due to one thing and another, but we should be able to hopefully meet at the same time each day. How does that sound?"

"Okay, I think," I said, adding, "Thank you."

"Well, okay then," he said, leading me to the door. "You're heading for lunch?"

"Yes," I said.

"Lucky you," he said. "I've got to prep some paperwork for a meeting this afternoon, so I'm eating at my desk. But some other time, we should have lunch together. Maybe you'll be able to relax better if I'm away from my desk and this more formal environment, yeah?"

'No', I didn't say. Having someone trying to be nice to me to get me to tell me things is the worst possible way to get me to trust them. Some of the other girls had been nicer to me before the winter break, which had surprised me a bit at the time because some of them had been in Madison's circle of friends. Now looking back, of course, it was clearly just something to get me to let my guard down. Maybe they'd been in on it too, or maybe one of the three had just asked them to do it as a favour.

"That might be nice," I said out loud.

It didn't matter. I would prefer that he didn't try to get friendly and we stayed purely professional, all things considered.

And because I had been a good girl throughout the entire chat and hadn't looked into the Other Place once – mostly because I didn't want to freak myself out and so get him suspicious – I looked back. Like Orpheus, I couldn't resist the urge to see what was behind me. Unlike Orpheus, of course, I wasn't rescuing my wife, and no one had actually told me not to look back with the threat of dire consequences. And also I wasn't a brilliant musician. So perhaps I wasn't much like him.

Regardless of my similarities or lack thereof to mythological figures, though, I risked a glance to see what the psychiatrist and his cramped office looked like in the Other Place.

Eight eyes blinked back at me above a fixed smiling face, and his six hands rested on the desk. Tendrils of pale silk bound him to his desk and hung from the ceiling. There were indistinct shapes wriggling in wrapped bundles, and I shuddered at the sight of them. I didn't know what they were, but they hovered at the edge of familiarity. Either way, I wanted out of the room, and I turned and wandered down the rusted corridors, headed for the cafeteria.

So, I thought, passing a morbidly obese woman whose flesh rippled and crawled, tiny hands and feet pressing against it from the inside. Let's look at what that might mean. Spider? Yes, certainly he's a spider in some way, if that represents something about him. A predator? Lazy, willing to wait and so do nothing? But he's trapped in his own webs in some way, I thought. That much seemed to be clear. Even if everything else wasn't.

I stepped around a patch of oil-black water, dripping down from the walls and ceiling. It looked deeper than it should have been. Was there a hole in the floor in the Other Place there? What would happen if I stepped in the puddle?

Urgh! Why couldn't my power tell me things in nice and simple ways? Why did it have to wrap things up in metaphor? I bet most Thinkers got to just_know _what their power told them, not have to piece it together from symbolism. I should start doing the crossword. It'd be training.

Still, it was a warning. I should be on by guard around him – preferably without letting him know that I didn't trust him. A spider-man couldn't be a good sign. Maybe I could see if I could talk to Hannah and see if another one would have any space to see me. But what if they were worse?

Why was I using it so much? I really couldn't say myself. There was a bit of me – and not a small bit, either – which really didn't want to see the horrible things I saw there. I didn't want to see the filth in the toilets, the strange black-red oil on my bed, or how there were all these monstrous renditions of the normal-looking people just an eye-blink away. And then there had been the thing in the meditation session. Could I make monsters from my own mind? It seemed like it. That should be enough to warn off any normal, reasonable person. But I kept on doing it.

It was probably because now I _knew _about the Other Place, it was always going to be there. At the back of my mind, I knew it existed, and closing my eyes to it wouldn't work. Everyone – apart from me and Kirsty, I wasn't sure what was going on with her – seemed to have a monster inside them. The world was always so close to being filthy and horrific. And certainly, that seemed to fit pretty well with what I'd found at school, and… well, my dad did have a temper. Which, I reminded myself, he tried to control. Even if the Other Place stripped people to their core, people could try to change themselves. They didn't need to act like the monsters the Other Place showed them as.

That was something, at least.

Maybe I should go stare at the butterflies in the cafeteria for a while. At least they were beautiful. And I could get some food there, I reminded myself, stomach grumbling. I had thrown up most of breakfast, after all.

I ate quickly. The macaroni-and-cheese was overcooked, but at least it was filling. I'm sure the sticky, stuffed feeling would go away in time. No one else sat at my table, so I was free to stare at the beautiful butterflies on the wall in the Other Place, ignoring the rainbow mist, the rust and the monsters around me. And at least in the Other Place, the macaroni was just grey and flavourless, which made it taste slightly more palatable. It certainly didn't have the too-strong aftertaste of the normal version.

Hmm. I made a mental node of that. Taste was another sense which was different for me when I was looking into the Other Place. Except I really couldn't just call it 'looking', could I? It covered touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell. It was a full sensory thing.

I was going to call it 'seeing', though, because there wasn't really a good word for 'all my senses experience it, but I'm not physically there'. It's not something the English language evolved to deal with.

Probably not any other languages, come to think of it.

Having eaten, I went back to my room. I had to think. I also had to be alone. Not just because I thought best without other people around me, being distracting, but also because I was going to see if I could do anything else with that strange not-me I had made during the meditation session. It probably wasn't a good idea to do that around other people. I didn't know what it had been going to do to Samantha, and until I knew what it was, I didn't want to find out. I had to find out what I could do and if I could control it. If freaky mind things were going to escape from me – I don't even know what I'd do. I'd _have _to tell people. It would be wrong otherwise. But until then, I wasn't going to breathe a word about it, and part of being not-crazy was not taking stupid risks.

Plus, the whole not 'freaking out in front of people and making them think I was crazy' thing was useful.

I can't say I didn't close the door behind me with a sigh of relief. I couldn't lock it, though, because the doors didn't have locks on the inside, and I couldn't even wedge something in the way because the door opened outwards. Not that I would have, of course. I was just innocently practicing the meditation. Just feeling a little homesick. No other reason. Certainly not experimenting with parahuman powers, no sir, not me.

Getting in the right frame of mind was hard. I couldn't sit on the bed, because the bed was where the probably-death reddish black oil was. But the bed was the only comfortable place to sit in the room, because there weren't any chairs. I tried perching on one of the counters, but that was no good. In the end, I wound up on the floor, sitting on one of my pillows.

But physical comfort was the least of my concerns. I had been relaxed, bored, even kind of curious when I had made that thing last time. Right now? I was on edge. I didn't want to see it again, but I did, and all the time I was worrying about what would happen if I managed. Matters were only made worse by the unpleasant full feeling I had sitting in my stomach from lunch.

I eventually turned on the television, flicking through the stations until I found some old timey radio station playing classical music. That would do to help me relax, I thought.

Turns out, classical music sounds really freaky when you're in the Other Place. Or at least this music did. Quite apart from the waves of static which pulsed through the speakers and the fact that the entire piece had both sped up in tempo and shifted to a minor key, the woman singing sounded on the edge of tears.

"Help me," she pleaded in between tracks. "I'm stuck in here."

I changed channels pretty quickly, to some boringly slow folk music that, while still afflicted by static, at least didn't have radio people begging to be let out.

Focus, Taylor, focus. Keep yourself together. And yes, perhaps later I would go through all the radio stations and see if mysterious radio people begging for aid was a common thing. If the Other Place showed something hidden about the world – well, that said something not very pleasant about the station or that track, or possibly the radio itself. But that would come later.

I just had to do what I'd done this morning again. I just had to try to change the Other Place, keeping an open mind. I'd started out not being able to control whether I saw the Other Place, and now I could. So I should be able to control if I made creatures or not. I had to learn control.

"Control," I whispered to myself, breathing in and out. My legs were going numb in this crossed position, but I wouldn't let myself think of that.

I exhaled, and a dark shape flowed out from my mouth and nose. I blinked, trying to clear watering eyes, and looked up into the face of a newly made monster.

The creature this time was different. It was more human than the last one, and bore more of a resemblance to me, but its expression was locked in a permanent rictus of terror. The figure wore a dirty red smock, stained with God only knew what. Its wounded, pale hands covered its eyes – no, I realised, the hands were fused with the flesh – and I could not shake the feeling that it was watching me with its wide-open, silently-screaming mouth.

It exhaled, and its breath smelt like the locker.

Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God. Why had I done this? My heart was beating like a drum in my ears and the warped, too-slow folk music was playing in the background. I tried to jump away from it, and realised too late that my legs were crossed. All I managed to do was fall over backwards, tumbling back onto the cold floor. Fear gripped every thought, an iron hand clenched around my gut. Mindlessly, I flailed back, scrabbling.

It smelt of the locker. It was going to eat me alive and then drag me back there. It was all because I'd been a fool and not told anyone and it was all my fault and I was going to die here except no I wouldn't die because there were worse things out there like the locker and the fear radiating off it was a palpable force and-

No.

"Stop," I whispered through dry lips. I willed it to stop. I imagined it bound up in chains, unable to move unless I permitted it to. If I had made it, I would control it. I _had _to. Otherwise it would take me back and _I wouldn't let it_.

Just for a moment, pain spiked from my fingers as if I'd just had a red-hot spike driven into each nail. This turned out to be not very metaphorical at all, because before my pain-greyed vision I saw ten glowing chains force their way out of my fingertips. Biting down on my lip, I tried my best not to scream. Hissing like freshly quenched steel, the chains wrapped around the eyeless figure, trussing it up tightly.

Despite the pain in my hands, I scrabbled backwards until my back collided with the wall. I gasped for air. The figure didn't move. Couldn't move, I realised, looking more closely. It was bound up in black iron, which seemed to pulse with my heartbeat. Iron which had come from my hands, I realised, staring down at my fingers. They looked inflamed, reddened, but they didn't look like they'd just been torn open.

Quickly, I flickered back to the normal way of looking at things. They were still bandaged there, and there didn't seem to be any fresh blood or other symptoms that red-hot chains had used them as an exit point. I also couldn't see the bound monster, which probably wasn't a good idea, so I returned to the Other Place.

Heart pounding, gasping for breath, I pulled myself to my feet. The creature was locked in place, bound by the living chains – which I was beginning to realise were the same order of thing as the creature – and so I could see it more clearly.

Now it was constrained, I could feel that not all of the fear I had been feeling had been my own. Or perhaps it had, but it had been fear I had put into making the creature. I had been scared of what my powers were going to do, scared of what I would do if I could do it again – or if I couldn't do it again – and so I had made something which caused fear. Yes. That made sense, and by the symbolic logic of the Other Place – well, it looked like me, but it was covering its eyes with its hands.

I had a sneaking suspicion that I'd made a monster from my own fear of my powers. Which meant that it would make people scared of my powers. Hmm. Or possibly scared of their own powers. I would need to-

No. I wouldn't check that. That would be a stupid thing to check. I'd find something much less alarming and traumatic to test that sort of thing. I'd rushed into this twice, and I'd only just worked out how to control the things. Maybe 'opening my mind' wasn't the way to get controllable creatures. And the chains had come from my fingers, the same fingers I'd torn open trying to claw out the caterpillars. Maybe they were a minion I'd made from that same feeling of 'I'm not going to lie down and give in'.

So. That meant I was a Thinker and a Master. Sensory things from the Other Place and the ability to make minion-constructs which I could now control. Hopefully. I tried thinking _really _hard about making the thing – Noeyes, I was going to call it Noeyes – walk over to the door. I was rather surprised when it did so, the chain-wrapped creature stumbling to where I wanted it to go.

Okay. _That _was kind of cool. I could control the things I made, at least once I'd… uh, got them under control. I didn't even have to give them explicit orders. I just had to think about it, and they'd do it. Just to make sure it wasn't premature to declare that I had the thing under control, I made it move around the room, and then for good measure, dance for me.

Noeyes wasn't very good at dancing. Maybe the heavy iron chains binding it had something to do with that.

Next step, I thought to myself, taking a deep breath. "Return," I whispered. Wait, was that the right phrasing? "Come back. Reabsorb. Stop existing. Get back in my head."

One of those commands worked – unless it was a matter of just wanting it gone – and so Noeyes came apart into a black tarry mist, which rushed into my lungs in a forced gasp. Strangely, it didn't taste of anything, but it left my lips and tongue feeling momentarily numb. It was like I'd just taken a large mouthful of ice cream, but without the cold or the ice cream – which as a simile could probably do with some work.

But that annoyance was lost beneath the glee I was feeling. Glee and relief. I wasn't a threat to other people. I didn't have to live my life worried that if I lost control, I might make a monster which I couldn't get rid of. I could try and find out if I could do something directly useful without having to worry that I might unleash something.

I looked around wildly, dismissing the Other Place so I could slump down on my bed without having to lie in the oil. The television was playing a cheerful bit of folk music in the background, and that just about matched my mood. I was still flooded with adrenaline from the fear and that combined with the glee felt amazing. I stuffed my forearm into my mouth, trying to muffle the sound of my giggling.

I sat bolt upright, swinging my legs off the bed, and almost reflexively opening my eyes to the Other Place.

What if I could affect things in the normal world? I'd need something which could – I looked around – yes, something which could pick up that book over there, and bring it to me. This time I'd make a creature which wouldn't need to be wrapped up in chains, which I would control from the offset. I closed my eyes, imagining the shape it would take. It would need hands, and it would probably fly because I didn't want to have to imagine legs, so I'd give it wings, and it's not like I needed to give it a real face or anything, because it would just have to go pick up a book. And it would come with the chains already around it, so it'd do what I said from the start. I gritted my teeth, focussed, and exhaled, feeling smoke escape from between my lips and from my nose.

I opened my eyes, and hovering before me in the Other Place was the thing I had visualised. I boggled slightly at the sight, because in my mind's eye it hadn't looked quite so – I reached for a word. Yes, 'freaky' would do. In retrospect, I wasn't sure why a creepy faceless china doll with rust-red butterfly wings and no legs had been a good idea. Still, it had hands, and I wouldn't have to imagine it walking, so perhaps it might work.

I'd get better with practice. And it wasn't like other people would see them, anyway. Fetch, I thought at the winged doll.

It tore itself apart in a cloud of bloody mist, reappeared by the book, and seized it in both hands. It lifted it up and flickered back to my position, depositing the book in my lap before dispersing.

Well. I had _meant _it to fly over, pick up the book, and carry it open. But, I thought, staring out the window of my Other room to the misty outside, I was totally fine with being able to make teleporting doll-things. That probably meant that if people couldn't see the Other Place, the book had just vanished and reappeared in my hands.

Considering what had actually moved the book, that was probably for the best.

But still! I had a power which wasn't just seeing horrible things! I could also make… um, horrible constructs! And – I grinned widely to myself – it seemed like I might be rather flexible in what I could make them do. I knew they could stir up emotions, as I'd been hit by fear from that one I'd wrapped in chains, and that they could also move physical objects. To someone who couldn't see them, those two powers would look totally unrelated. What else could I do? Sure, from what I'd read up on the classifications, I was a Master and a Thinker, but those were pretty broad categories. And when I had a better grasp on the range of things I could do…

My thoughts were interrupted by a sharp knock on my door.


	10. Chrysalis 1-10

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 1.10**

I froze.

The knock at the door came again.

Almost reflexively, I sunk onto the Other Place, and stared around the room. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Well, out of the ordinary by the standards of a twisted bare-concrete-and-rust madness dimension, at least. I could see it was hazy, or possibly misty on the other side of the dirty glass of the window, but nothing was staring in at me.

I should probably answer the door, then.

Perhaps it was the men in black, come to recruit me into a sinister conspiracy which found unnoticed parahumans and used them as secret deep cover assets away from the public eye. I was about to be whirled away into a world of intrigue and politicking, and would also coincidentally get to leave Winslow and get secret agent tutors who would teach me everything I needed to know for my new role. And so would never see Emma, Madison or Sophia again.

Though the men in black would probably actually also be the women in black, because any sinister conspiracy which only recruited men was probably not too interested in me.

And was also pretty stupid for passing over half the population, so I wouldn't want to be a member anyway.

I opened the door outwards, and came face to face with a horrifying walking corpse which seemed both frozen and burned. I flinched and gasped, and then remembered that I was still seeing the Other Place.

That was probably a bad habit. Forgetting that I was still looking into a twisted version of the real world where everything was decayed and horrifying was, all things considered, something I shouldn't be doing. I should see if I could find a way to only see it with one eye at a time, or see both it and the real world at the same time, or something like that.

Returning to normalcy, I saw the person at the door was, in fact, Sam. She was almost certainly not a secret agent for the New World Order or whoever your cabal _de jour _was. Even if – I inwardly sighed – she would probably look better in a black suit and mirrored sunglasses than I would. We might have both had scabs on our wrists, but she didn't have marks on her face and was prettier than me on top of that.

She was also looking at me funny.

"I'm a little… uh, jumpy," I said, biting my top lip. "Sorry."

"Yeah, I saw you freak out in meditation," she said, shrugging. She had her thumbs hooked in the waistband of her bottoms. "Uh…"

"I haven't been sleeping well, and I dozed off because it was all quiet and I had a nightmare," I said, quickly. Perhaps a little too quickly.

"I wasn't actually asking that," she said, flicking her head. The motion seemed more appropriate for someone with longer hair, and looking more closely I could see that her short cut was a little rough around the edges. "I was actually going to ask – well, the rest of us are hanging out in the rec room. Are you doing anything?"

Well, I'm making monsters with my mind which only exist physically in a creepy hell-place which exists parallel to the normal world, I didn't say. Sorry about the one which almost attacked you in the meditation class – oh, did I not mention that? "Sure, nothing really," I said. "Just reading."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Oh, you're another one of those ones," she said. "Come on, then."

It turned out that one of the rooms along our corridor was actually a rec room, with sofas, a television in a protective cabinet, and some old magazines stacked in a corner. The walls were a clearly-chosen-to-be-calming shade of blue, and the plaster was cracked up near the top. Sam collapsed down next to Leah, while I took a seat next to Emily. Kirsty wasn't present.

"… but telenovelas are funny!" Emily insisted, continuing the conversation I'd heard on the way here. "So much overacting!"

"You're the only one who speaks any Spanish," Leah said, her head resting on the soft arm of the sofa.

"Not enough to understand them," Emily said cheerfully. She flashed an impudent grin at me. "Taylor, yeah? Come on, we should totally watch one and make up our own dialogue for it! It'd be even better than knowing what was going on!"

"Uh," I began intelligently. Of all the things which I had expected someone to say to me, that hadn't been one of them. Emily looked younger than me, and was certainly acting that way. "What's going on?"

"Sam and Em are arguing over what to watch," Leah said, yawning. "I think Sam must've gone off to grab you to get support or something. I don't really care. I'm so bored I'm okay with anything."

"You could at least have backed me up," Sam said accusingly.

"Could have, but that would have taken effort," she retorted.

"You're a terrible friend," Sam said, lips twisting into a pout.

Something flashed across Leah's face, too fast for me to catch it. She covered it with a frown. "Look, I see you're trying to get me to throw a cushion at you, but I'm not going to fall for it! They're mine!"

"So terrible," Sam said, shaking her head. "Anyway!" she began, flicking through the channels. "Today, we have a choice of Emily's Spanish thing that no one understands, an episode of some historical drama thing where… uh, the women are all running around in petticoats, something which seems to involve men in suits in Las Vegas, adverts, more ads, music channel, music channel, _country _music station… okay, I think we've gone into the radio stuff." She started heading back down the channels.

"The petticoats thing can't be too terrible," I suggested. I thought I recognised it as one of the endless stream of Pride and Prejudice remakes, and it might have been one of the better ones.

"Seconded," Leah said quickly. "Wasn't that Jane Eyre?"

Oh, apparently it was, we found after watching a few minutes of it.

"Is it always this… boring?" I asked, after a suitable period.

"Stupid historical dramas? Yeah," Emily said, a little sulkily.

"No," I said, waving my hand. "I mean all this. Like, at the moment, we're just being left alone and," I shrugged. "I guess I never really thought about what happened in here until-"

"… until you wound up here, yeah," Sam said. "Same here."

"I think it might be because none of us are really severe," Leah said. "Like… well, I know we're all going to be out of here soon?" she turned it into a question, glancing at me.

"Yeah," I said. That surprised me. Or were they not counting Kirsty? She wasn't here. Maybe she had an appointment or something. Or was sitting in her room as I had been. She probably wasn't making monsters with her mind, though, I thought and shivered. "Just being watched because," I held up my wrists, silently. "But it just seems dull. I don't think the books I took with me will last weeks."

"Oh, thank goodness!" Leah said, perking up. "Someone else with books! I'll trade you for anything. I've been bored out of my mind. I ran out of new books _weeks _ago and the library here is trash."

"You also ran out of my books," Sam drawled.

"You only brought three, and I'd read two of them already. You barely count as a book-source," Leah said playfully, prodding her in the arm. "You're totally inadequate as a bastion of bookishness. Your literary lack is legion. Your wordliness is… um, woeful. Your… text-ness is terrible. And so on and so forth because I'm running out of alliteration."

"Text-ness?" I asked. I couldn't have stopped myself for a million do… okay, I could have stopped myself for a million dollars. But I couldn't have stopped myself for – like, ten or so.

"Leah has caught worditis," Sam said. "It may be terminal."

"I've had it for years," Leah said dismissively, flapping a hand. "Have you read anything by Claire Golding? I don't suppose you have her new book with you?"

I shook my head. "Sorry," I said. "I got it for Christmas, but I already finished it, so I didn't bring it."

Leah crossed her arms. "Damn," she said. "Well, what did you think of it, anyway?"

"Not her strongest," I admitted. That was putting it lightly. It had been a chore to get through the second half of the book. Sarah had spent most of the time feeling sorry for herself. I didn't read books to follow people moping about how they couldn't change their situation. I got enough of that in real life. "I think she's losing her edge. The Falling Petals wasn't great, either."

She frowned at me, too-thin lips pursing. "Really? I liked The Falling Petals. I think it was certainly stronger than Leftmore Willows. Have you read any Umberto Eco?"

"Is that an author or a series?" I asked.

"That would be a 'no', then," she said. "I'd lend you one of his ones in return for any books you have, but they didn't let me bring in 'In the Name of the Rose'." She smiled, wrapping her arms around herself. "I guess the Diabolicals really are everywhere."

I didn't get it.

"Ignore her," Sam said. "Hit her with a rolled up newspaper if you really can't stand the constant references to books." She sighed. "Someone got the paper in the café this morning before me. I'm feeling news deprived. When this is over, can we go to a news channel and see what's happening outside these walls?"

It was strange, sitting there with them. Not because I was sitting around in my pyjamas with three other girls I barely knew, watching a drama. No, it was strange because it somehow managed to feel comfortable. Leah and I talked quietly for a bit about books, and I found out that my musical tastes had almost nothing in common with either Sam.

I'd almost forgotten where I was, when a bleeping went off Emily excused herself, to return with a paper cup of water. She shuddered as she swallowed some pills. "The aftertaste is yuck," she said, pulling a face, drinking more water. "Worse than the last lot. They put you on anything yet, Taylor?"

"Not yet," I said. "I think they mentioned sleeping things, though. But," I sighed, shoulders slumping, "I guess I don't like the idea of having to take pills."

There seemed be a lot of sighing going on. It wasn't a surprise. The air here tasted a little stale, in its medicinal clinicalness.

Emily shrugged. "It's not like it's a big deal," she said. "I'm just in here for a few weeks while they switch my meds." She rolled her eyes. "_Again_. Which means I wind up here while they phase me over and keep an eye on me while the new lot builds up in my system or however the hell it works. I just hope this new lot doesn't make me feel as sick. And, you know, actually works all the time. Like, I was totally glad that the last lot didn't work properly, because it made me feel like shit all the time and honestly? I was feeling so bad that being crazy didn't sound like such a bad deal." She shook her head. "So, what, do you lot know each other already?"

I blinked. "Huh?"

Leah looked me up and down. "I don't think I've seen her at school," she said to Sam. "Arcadia?" she asked me.

I shook my head. "Winslow," I admitted. And it was an admission, even as this confirmed my suspicions about them. Arcadia High was the other big school, on the other side of town. It was the nice school, with the expensive facilities and the brand new swimming pool and presumably even teachers who gave a damn, if their budget stretched that far. Winslow was not the nice school.

"Ah," Sam said, stretching out before curling her legs up on the sofa. "Makes sense that you didn't look familiar." She sighed. "This is my first time in this place," she said, folding her arms. "Worst. Christmas. Ever."

"I got wobbly in the run-up to Christmas because I wanted to let myself pig out a bit over the holidays, but I was over my target weight and so I-" Leah screwed her eyes shut. "No. I was stupid and made everyone worried and," she sighed, "ruined everyone's Christmas. And I got everyone at school another talk about the dangers of being too thin, so I'm probably going to get stick for it."

"There are a lot of them," Sam said.

"Really?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. I hadn't thought of that. I thought everything would be better at Arcadia, and said that.

"Could we not talk about it?" Leah said quietly. I hastily apologised, feeling like a brute. I didn't want to talk about why I was here, so why would other people?

"I'm home-schooled," Emily said, with a sigh. "My mum doesn't trust the schools because she's with the Movement. Like, even before my head got funny, she was all 'they won't teach you the right things' and 'they'll just mean you come into contact with the wrong sort of boys' and things like that. And now she's also all 'if you went to school, the stress would make your condition worse'."

I have to say, at least to me home-schooling sounded kind of appealing, and said as much.

"Trust me," Emily said darkly. "It isn't."

An hour or so passed peacefully, before the tannoy went off.

"Taylor Hebert, you have a telephone call at Reception. Telephone call for Taylor Hebert."

I excused myself, and headed straight there. There was only one person who was really likely to call me. Sitting down on the cushioned chair by the telephone, I took the call.

"Taylor?" asked my Dad. "Hello. How're you holding up?"

"Dad," I said warmly. "I'm… I'm doing good, I think."

We talked for a while. It was good to hear from him. I'd only seen him yesterday, but it seemed much, much longer. In the time since he'd dropped me off, I'd worked out how to control my powers and how to see into the Other Place, and also how to make and control the creepy monsters. I'm not sure that was what they'd meant when they said that the psychiatric hospital would help me, but the boredom did seem to be giving me reason to improve. We talked of nice, cheery, mundane things, and I told him that I'd met the girls in the same section and they seemed nice and the woman who looked after us and she was nice and my psychiatrist and he was nice and everything was… nice. Although…

"Dad," I asked. "Why are you calling now? Shouldn't you be at work?"

"Everyone got sent home early today," he said, sighing. "There's another Movement march tonight, and the police are busy cordoning off the area and clearing the place. The company shifted shifts around, so I'll be working this weekend. No one wants anyone around the place when everything's tense after last week."

I inhaled sharply. "What happened last week?" I asked. "Dad? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Taylor. It's not really important so-"

"Dad, they're shutting down the place for a march," I said, trying to keep my voice down. "That's not something that isn't important."

"A mob went for one of the workers' buses over at Filkmore, and… well, they were immigrant workers and there were some deaths," he said reluctantly. "On both sides. And there have been more attacks. I'm… well, you shouldn't be worrying about it. I'm fine, and the police should have everything in hand. Don't think about it, Taylor."

"I have a lot of time to think," I said. "I'm bored more than anything at the moment. Though," I cleared my throat, "I talked with my psychiatrist – I said I met him, yes. He was nice, and he doesn't think I need pills at the moment." That wasn't quite true, because he just said he didn't want to put me on them yet, quite apart from the fact that he was a monstrous spider-man in the Other Place, but that was what Dad would want to hear. "So we're going to just be talking for now."

"That's good, that's good. And talking about talking, Taylor, I think you should-" he began, and trailed off. He paused. "Why didn't you tell me about Emma?" he asked, slowly and painfully.

I paled. I was glad I was sitting down because my legs felt like jelly. "Tell you what?" I managed, knuckles whitening around the telephone.

"I know, Taylor. I found out from the cops," he said. "I… I meant to only ask you once you were back home, but the conversation just led into it and then I was sure that if I didn't ask you now, I never would."

I sighed. "I thought it was just a falling out at first," I said, trying to move away from the topic. He didn't need to know everything. "Maybe she was upset because we didn't go to summer camp together, I don't know. Maybe that was it. I sometimes wonder if I said something to her which… which I don't even remember, but really hurt her. But she'd met new friends and didn't want anything to do with me and," I swallowed, "that hurt. But we'd fallen out before, and I thought if I just… waited out, we'd be friends again. And then… she didn't try to be friends again. I don't know. Maybe I did get her angry in some way. And things had got better before Christmas! She wasn't talking to me, but she wasn't doing bad stuff."

"You should have told me," he said.

"It was girl stuff," I protested. "And," I paused, "if I'd told someone, I was afraid they'd just get worse because I'd be a tattletale."

"How did you manage to keep it quiet since last summer?" he asked.

I took a deep breath. "Summer before last," I said weakly. "Oh-nine."

There was an awkward silence. "Is… is there anything else you want to tell me?" he asked. I could hear the distress in his voice, knew how horrible he must be feeling, and my heart went out to him. I really wanted to tell him, I really did. About what I was seeing. About what I could do.

I could tell him everything. I could talk to him. I could join the local Wards, the group which looked after young parahumans, and they could get me moved to Arcadia, where all the other Wards supposedly went. The Protectorate, the US government cape organisation, hired every parahuman they could find. If you didn't want to be paramilitary or your skills weren't right for it; why, there were lots of civilian fields you could work in. There were Thinkers on all kinds of committees in the federal government, Tinkers kept society working, and… well, they were the most employable ones, if you didn't want to go for the military or join a Parahuman Response Team.

I could do things. Make things better. I wouldn't even go out and fight crime, because I was a Thinker, and even before I worked out what I could do with those strange projections in the Other Place, I was pretty sure I had a psychometric power. I could be… like, some kind of psychic cop-assistant, investigating crime scenes and telling people 'He didn't die here. The body was moved'.

That was depressing, in its own way. I mean, yes, sure, I'd be helping people, solving crimes and helping find killers. But that would mean I'd spend every day at school not letting people know what I was – all the Wards were capes, parahumans who concealed their identities – which seemed to be to be a very lonely life. Working day and night with people who you could never go off duty with, never show your face, never let them really know you.

And if I was using my powers to solve crimes, it would certainly be something which would mean I couldn't go maskless, even when I was old enough to leave. A Tinker who just worked on making those new 'smartphones' could be just another person, but an investigator who could solve crimes no one else could would be a target. No wonder so many people ended up working directly in the Protectorate, where you could relax with other people like you. The mask and cape – usually not literally a cape nowadays – set you apart.

I didn't want that. I'd spent the past year with no real friends, and the idea of my adult life being like that was soulcrushing. Maybe – maybe when I was out of here, I'd go look at the Wards, see what they were like. If they could get me away from Winslow, it would be worth it. But it'd be a big step. Once I told the Protectorate and they'd confirmed it, I'd be on record. Even if I turned down the offer, which you could do, and went back to my normal life, things wouldn't be the same. What if some supervillain stole the list of names? They might try to hurt me or Dad – or try to recruit me and threaten Dad to get me to work for them.

I wouldn't let Dad get hurt because of me. He was safer off not knowing. Not until I was sure that was what I wanted to do.

I could think about it later. Pretty sad, how trying not to get depressed about how the world sucked and I now at least had something which would guarantee me a job as an adult had just managed to lead into further dark thoughts. Wonder if that was a special Thinker power in its own right? The ability to find the downside of any given situation?

Or maybe I was just feeling blue because I didn't want to be here at all. Hearing him speak, hearing him upset because he'd obviously found out about what had been going on from the police or something, and had been bottling it up, not saying anything while I was in hospital – I wiped my suddenly runny eyes.

"I miss you," I said in a choked voice. "I want to be home."

"And I want you to be home, kiddo," he said, his voice breaking up too. "Just… just concentrate on getting well, okay? Don't think about school or anything. I promise, I won't bring it up again. Just… just please please _please _talk to your therapist person or whatever the professional term for it is. When you're out of that place, everything's going to change, I promise."

"Okay," I said faintly. I couldn't see how he could promise that, but I wanted to believe it so hard.

"I'll call you tomorrow, okay? Every day. I said I would, and I will. I love you."

"Thank you," I whispered. "I love you too."

After an awkward bit where neither of us really wanted to put down the phone or hang up, we managed to mutually stumble towards ending the call. I put the phone back on its hook, and sighed.

"Was that your dad?" one of the nurses said, coming over to shoo me away from the seat by the phone.

"Yes," I said, blotting my eyes on my sleeves. "Just feeling a bit homesick now."

"Poor girl," she said warmly. "Still, it looked like you were enjoying talking to him at first. That's nice. It's good to have family. Too many people here don't get any calls at all."

And I could even have believed her platitudes, if I hadn't checked the Other Place, and seen her corpulent, bloated form, which pulsed and trembled with every heartbeat. I had no idea what that meant, but somehow it made her words ring hollow. I made my way back to the rec room in Wilson, and slumped down, hugging a pillow.

That night, I dreamed that I was being torn apart. That I was fractured and broken within the rusty iron locker, surrounded by dead caterpillars, and everything that made me _me _was seeping through the cracks in my mind and body. My life crawled away from me, along with my mind, and I scrabbled in the filth and grime, trying to pull them back into me. I was a porcelain doll in a cold dead universe which hated me, and I was bleeding out.

I reached out, and wilfully impaled my hand on one of the spikes which was already slick with my own blood. The nail-stigmata piercing my flesh, I broke it off, and screamed as I stabbed the life trying to escape me. I pinned it to the ground, and it wriggled, like a trapped insect. I had to get it back in me. I had to.

I woke in the Other Place, whimpering to myself. There was iron growing on the walls, coating the bare concrete like a scab. I was sinking into the red-black oil, and it was sinking into me. It smelt of the locker. Panicking, flailing, I managed to return to normalcy, and lay in this dark room – God, I wanted to be home again, back in my own bedroom! – curled into a ball on the bed.

In the end, I managed to cry myself back to sleep, and didn't dream again.


	11. Chrysalis 1-0x: Ten of Wands

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chrysalis 1.x **

**Ten of Wands**

A damp, cold clinging chill permeated the city, painting halos around every light and leaving the pavements slightly slick to the foot. It had been raining earlier, and it felt like it was going to rain again tonight. Stepping out of the 24-7, Jamelia Chriswell shivered and tugged her jacket around her. Breath steaming in the winter air, she headed back to the car.

"It is goddamn _freezing _out there. Gotta be in the twenties," she complained to her partner, clambering into the car and dropping an energy drink in his lap. She dropped the carrier bag in her footwell. "Nice and pre-chilled for you."

Her fellow officer grinned up at her. "You're a life saver," Robert said, breaking the seal and chugging it. He winced. "Urgh. I hate working nights."

"Join the club," she said, fastening her seatbelt. Outside, a few cars were passing along the late night streets, but the sidewalks were nearly empty. Only a few stragglers were out in the cold and wet. No one sensible wanted to be outside when the weather was like this.

"I mean, I don't even like how this crap tastes, but I need it to keep awake," he continued, taking another mouthful.

She peered at the dashboard. "Yeah, I knew it. Twenty-six outside." She shook her head. "I hope those Patriot idiots are freezing. The overtime'll be nice post-Christmas, but couldn't they have found a warmer night to get everyone called up? Anything come in over the radio when I was out?" Jamelia asked, looking around over the parking lot. She blew on her hands, and held them over the heating grills.

"Disturbance over on Twenty-Fourth and Clayton," Robert said, running a hand over his short-cropped hair. "Low priority, but I said we'd check it out." He winked. "Said you were dealing with someone who wanted to complain that someone's dog had pissed against his car."

"Har-de-har," she said, fastening up her seatbelt. She took a thankful bite into a chocolate bar, and swallowed. "Okay, then," she said. "Did they say what it was?"

"Sounds like a few old drunks setting fire to a car," Rob said, starting the engine.

"At least it'll be warm there," Jamelia said.

"Hah. We can hope. They're probably just doing it to be taken in to the nice warm cells."

She shivered, running her fingers through her hair. "Kinda get where they'd be coming from."

The police car pulled smoothly out of the parking lot, onto the damp streets of Brockton Bay. They drove down, headed towards their destination. This was far from the worst part of the city, but it certainly wasn't the best either. The way one might describe it was 'tired'. Paint flaked from buildings which had been decorated in better days, and periodic patches of darkness interrupted the sodium glow of the street lamps, vandalism or ill-repair leaving a light extinguished.

From behind the barred windows of electronics shops, cathode rays blared into the night's darkness. There weren't any rare, expensive flatscreens on display. Those products of parahuman-run factories would be locked up safely, if those shops even had any to sell. They probably didn't. Such consumer goods only appeared in the elite boutiques on the Boardwalk, and this was definitely not the Boardwalk.

In the distance, the roar of a crowd could be heard. The Patriotic rally. There was a certain pattern to it, a distinct cadence. It would rise and fall, almost like the waves which washed the dirty decaying port to the east.

"At least it doesn't sound like open war has broken out," Robert said jokingly, eyes loitering for a moment at the warmth of a Chinese take-out shop. The owner caught his eye for a moment, looking welcoming, but he continued on.

Jamelia grunted.

On Nineteenth, a gaggle of uniformed twenty-somethings staggered down the sidewalk arm in arm. They were singing, loudly and drunkenly. Some of them were carrying brown paper bags which obviously had alcohol in them; others had carrier bags filled with mixers and snacks. Even as the two police officers watched, one of the women threw up into the street, to jeers and cheers alike.

"Want to do anything?" Jamelia asked, nose wrinkling.

"What, against that many drunk soldiers? Not on your life," Robert said heatedly. "Just tell control about them and let the Army deal with their drunks."

"Yeah, best all around," she replied, reaching out for her handset. "Control, this is Chriswell. We have approximately fifteen – that is, one-five – 390s heading south-east along Nineteenth… currently at the intersection with Brameer. Look like they're Army. Can you 10-5 this to their base and tell them to go pick up their drunks? We don't have the manpower to handle them and are currently on the way to a disturbance on Twenty-Fourth and Clayton."

"10-4, Chriswell," came back the crackly voice over the old radio. "Please stand by." There was a pause. "Okay, will do. Continue on your current assignment. Army will be notified."

The car continued along its way, leaving them behind them. "They're not bad kids, probably," Robert said, the traffic lights painting his face red. "We're all young once."

"I didn't say anything," Jamelia said.

"My kid brother's signed up. So did I, before I came here. Only job we could get. No wonder they go a little wild. It's probably the first time in their life they've had spare cash to burn. I know I did some dumb things when I was in the army."

"They're a bunch of drunk idiots. So much for our last line of defence. It's a waste of taxpayer money. They're being paid to do pretty much nothing, just in case an Endbringer shows up."

"Heh. Probably going to get hell from their officers," Robert said, grinning paternalistically. "We used to get hell whenever someone in our platoon gets picked up from town on charges. That's gotta be… what, three squads?" He accelerated away from the lights. "They're prob'ly gonna wish we picked them up. They'll be scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush for that. Hell, for that many, they'll be finding all-new messes for them to clean."

They sat in silence for a while, as shops gave way to cheap office space and rented buildings. It started raining lightly. To their left, a truck was being loaded by tired-looking Asian women parked in front of an industrial-scale laundry. The lights were still on in several of the office blocks, and Jamelia wondered for a moment what they were doing in there so late, when half the city seemed to be deserted because of the rally. But whatever they were doing in there, they were doing it quietly and not-obviously-illegally, so it wasn't her problem.

No, her problem was straight ahead. Three burning cars sat in an otherwise empty parking lot, ablaze. The street lights had been broken and the windows of one of the buildings next to the lot were boarded up, so the fires were the main source of light. Hooded youths were gathered around the fire, warming themselves. There were discarded things which looked like both spray and beer cans around them. More importantly, a prone shape – a body? – lay just at the edge of the fire light.

They looked like gang members.

"Control, we have three 11-24s, vehicles are on fire," she said into her handset. "Possible Code Purple. Multiple 10-66s around vehicles, I can see six. They're wearing hoodies, can't see any masks on them. I think there's a person on the ground. Could just be drunk, but we're going to check."

"10-24. Play it safe, Chriswell."

"10-24, Control," Jamelia put her handset down, and found Robert staring at her.

"What is it?" she asked.

"It's probably nothing," he said awkwardly. "They're a bunch of gangers who set some abandoned cars on fire in the cold. And there's a bunch of them and they look like maybe E88ers. Can't we just ignore this? Go for something that matters."

Her eyes widened. "It's someone who's totally out of it at best. And they're _skinheads_," she said in contempt. "What if that's some poor kid who just happened to run across six of them?"

"It's probably just one of them drunk after setting the car on fire," he grumbled, unfastening his seatbelt nonetheless and checking his pistol. "If you're wrong about this, you owe me something warm and full of sugar."

Outside, a fine drizzle continued to sleet down from the skies, keeping the floor slick and visibility poor and sapping all warmth from anyone exposed. The weather was getting worse, but honest, proper rain would be better than this undecided downpour, almost closer to mist than rain. In the distance, a car alarm wailed. The two cops turned on their flashlights. Raindrops danced in the beams.

"Hey!" Robert yelled out, letting his flashlight sweep over the scene. There were chalk markings on the ground around the cars, although in the rain and in the glare of the fires, they were obscured. "What's going on here?"

"Fuck off!" one of the hooded figures yelled back. That one sounded young and female.

"It's the cops!" another one said, this time male.

"I don't care if it's the fucking queen of England," the woman –the girl – retorted. "She can fuck off too."

"Who's that on the ground?" Jamelia shouted, squeezing her pistol tightly. There was a bit of her which wished she had more range time. There were six gangers and if it came down to violence – her stomach clenched, and the shake in her arm made her flashlight dance. She didn't want to die.

One of them made an oinking sound, and her knuckles whitened. She forced herself to breathe. To stay calm. "Who's that?" she asked again, her light pooled over the prone figure.

"Just one of us, piggy!" the loud-mouthed girl shouted back. "Go off and hassle some actual criminals."

"Like those slanty chinks down towards the docks," another one called out. "They're all criminals anyway. We're just keeping the place safe from those shits."

Grumbling, though, the youths dispersed into the darkness. Advancing, she checked the prone figure. Up close, she could see it was a Asian man, with blood running from an open cut on his forehead. He looked bruised and battered, and had a prominent black eye. She raised an eyebrow at her partner.

Robert looked vaguely embarrassed, but shrugged.

Despite his injuries, the victim was conscious. "They gone?" he asked. "I not move and they stop kicking, but…"

"Yes, they've gone," she said.

With a wince, he pulled himself to his feet, and immediately doubled over, groaning. Between the two of them, the two cops managed to lead the man back to the car.

"Okay, sir, we're just going to have to check you to see how hurt you are. Can you tell me your name?" Jamelia said, while her partner talked to the control centre.

"Jim Lee," he replied with a strong accent, sitting in the car out of the rain.

"And your current address?"

"11003 Seventeenth. I live in Flat 21c."

She noted that down. He seemed responsive, and didn't seem confused. "Are you married? Do you have children?"

"Not married. Not anymore. One daughter, lives with ex-wife."

"What is your daughter's name?"

"She called Xiulan."

"Can you advise if we have an 11-40?" her radio asked.

His eyes were responsive and dilated normally when she shone the light in them. He was bleeding from his scalp, but it looked like a shallow cut. "Do you want us to call for an ambulance?" she asked the man.

"No. No, I fine," he answered. "No ambulance need for me. They set fire to my car! Take my wallet! Go arrest them!"

"11-42, according to the victim. No signs of a concussion," she said, a tad dubiously. "Mr Lee, are you sure that you don't…"

"Fine!"

"Confirmed that the victim doesn't want an ambulance," she said into her radio.

Robert approached her. "I'll take his statement," he said. "You check the scene."

"It's wet out there," she said.

"Yes?" He shrugged. "Heads or tails?"

"Heads."

It was tails.

Grumbling, Jamelia headed back out into the cold and wet. At least it was warm around the cars, and as long as she kept upwind she didn't have to breathe in the fumes. The falling water hissed as it touched the hot metal of the burning vehicles, and she swept her eyes and flashlight over the nearby buildings.

A stylised shape was painted in white onto the abandoned office block that backed onto the parking lot, fresher than the rest of the graffiti that tattooed it. It suggested a little girl holding a red balloon, and sprayed under it was-

RIP ENID EMILTON

-in crude capital letters.

Jamelia's nose wrinkled in contempt.

Three years ago or so, there had been a nasty incident where the five year-old daughter of a prominent figure in the Patriot Movement had been killed in a fight between Chinese and Japanese gangers. It hadn't been a political thing. She'd just been caught in the crossfire and hit by a stray bullet. It happened.

Except most of the children caught in random crossfires weren't so pretty, blonde and photogenic, didn't have parents who had lots of Movement contacts and press support and _certainly_ weren't such a convenient martyr.

Come to mention it, almost all children who died in such a manner didn't have the initials 'EE' leading to local skinheads taking her as a cause celebre, either.

She shook her head in disgust. It was pretty clear what had happened here. Some poor bastard got beat up, his car set on fire, and now this graffiti? Yeah. It was just another bubble in a city which was set to boil. She'd been on the scene when that mob had set on those Asian workers down at the docks, where people had died. And a week ago, Lung, the parahuman leader of the Bomei, burned down several warehouses in the docks owned by companies linked to the Empire-88 and the Iron Eagles. And then there had been the shootings, up in the northern parts of the city…

The gangers here had been looking for revenge.

She doubted that the skinheads here had even known that the man they'd attacked had been Chinese, rather than Japanese. They probably thought every Asian in the city went around as part of one big gang, if they cared that much. Jamelia had worked the street beat long enough to know that it was laughable that the Chinese-Americans who made up the White Lion Association and the local branch of the 14K Triad would want anything to do with the first generation Japanese refugees who named their gang for their 'exile'.

She worked her way along the wall. More gang graffiti. Most of it looked recent, and it was all done in a similar style. There was that recurring runic theme these racist groups seemed to love, tugged straight off the front cover of a heavy metal album. Some of it was actually pretty artistic, by the standards of some of the crap she'd seen scrawled on walls, which suggested they'd had time to work here.

She reached the edge of the building, where it led over to the next lot and a still-active building, and glanced down the alleyway which separated the two. The other building had been freshly painted in the past few months, but had still managed to gather a thinner layer of spray-paint. Patches of off-grey marked areas where some of the larger or more obnoxious gang marks had been painted over.

Trash cans littered the narrow alleyway, their contents split over the ground. The entire place smelt vile, and she was just about to go when something caught her eye.

There seemed to be a shape lying behind one of the overturned bins. It just caught the light for a moment, but its shape brought dreadful imaginings to mind. Jamelia swallowed, and shone her flashlight over it again. Yes, it looked sort of like a body. In a bag.

The rain was getting heavier. The buildings on one side of the alleyway were only a single storey, and the rain bounced off the metal roof, making a racket which drowned out the noise of the city.

"Rob," she said into her radio, holding her flashlight between her shoulder and cheek, "back me up. I've got something suspicious here."

He arrived, and a little bit of her took schadenfreude in the fact that he, too, was now out in this heavy rain. "Look," she said. "There."

He nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I see it."

Side by side, they advanced, lights dancing over the graffiti-covered walls and the filthy floor. There, a split-open bag disgorged used condoms and old razors; here, old broken beer bottles lay in gleaming piles. It seemed like this alley had been used for tipping junk from the entire block. Those empty noodle cartons looked like they'd come all the way from the Vietnamese takeaway they'd seen on the way in.

"Hey, is that door open?" Robert asked, shining his light at the fire escape of the open building. It was slightly ajar, propped open with some trash. It didn't look like it had been broken into.

"Sucks to be them," Jamelia said, trying not to breathe too deeply. Stepping closer, she swallowed, the scent of rotten meat so strong she could taste it in the back of her throat. There was a dark stain around the suspicious bag, a leak from some small tear in its black plastic. Reaching out, she nudged it with her foot.

Like a dam breaking, it split open entirely in a flood of half-cooked noodles and raw chicken. Maggots crawled in the rot and filth, squirming in the sudden brightness.

Jamelia gagged, but mixed with revulsion was relief. It was just a normal black bag filled with normal trash. No body. It had been nothing but a trick of dim light and overstrained plastic. She laughed nervously to herself. She was just jumpy.

"Shit, that stinks!" Rob said, snorting nervously along with her. "Wow. That… fuck, I thought it was… man, don't scare me like that."

Something fell on his head, and he flinched. Feathers drifted down from above.

Jamelia flinched back in instinctual shock, and then blanched as the thing in the pool of light made itself clear. The half-eaten pigeon stared up at her, its dead eyes wide open and its organs spilling out. She looked up in slow horror, and caught sight of the dark shape on the low roof. Something black and horrific and utterly inhuman lurked in the shadows. A single drop of drool drooped down from its mouth, and splashed at the edge of the light, steaming in the cold.

It growled, a deep bass rumble that shook the guts. It was not a very loud growl. It didn't need to be. It was coming from a mouth which could swallow a man's head whole.

"What the fuck!" the man beside her snapped, scrabbling to draw his pistol. In the rain, he lost his grip on the handle, and it went flying. The clatter in the filth of the alley was almost lost.

Jamelia simply froze. The canine, reptilian shape was much bigger, much _more _than any real animal should be. There was something about its teeth, which glinted in the low light, which screamed to her that if she stopped moving, she might survive. And there was something almost _human _about the way its arms bent. Something handlike about the claws that grasped the edge of the tin roof.

The next minute was a gap in her memory. One that started with adrenaline and panic, and ended with her sprawling in a filthy, soaking-wet alleyway. She'd lost sight of Robert, but she'd also lost sight of that thing. Groggily, she pulled herself to her feet, and noticed she'd kept hold of her handgun.

She'd emptied it.

She didn't remember firing it. She slotted in a fresh magazine, and worked the slide.

"There she is!" she heard a young-sounding voice shout, and she whirled.

And everything went black.

It was somehow darker than a powercut. It was a darkness which went beyond a lack of light, a darkness which numbed every sense. Jamelia screamed and didn't even hear her own voice. Pistol in hand, she opened fire wildly on instinct. She couldn't hear the bark of her weapon, or see the flashes. All she felt was the reassuring kick. It was the only thing which told her the rest of the world still existed. And then it stopped kicking and she was left in nothingness.

Something hit her, hard, in the stomach. She flailed in the darkness, trying to protect herself, but whatever it was grabbed her wrist, spun her around, and kneed her in the small of the back. Red pain danced across her vision, and she was almost glad of it, because it was a respite from the nothing. Someone held her, someone strong, and she was sure she screamed when they delivered a breathtaking punch to her kidneys.

Whoever they were, they were strong, fast, and knew exactly how to take down a person who couldn't even see to fight back.

She barely felt the tape around her wrists.

Light re-emerged, or perhaps the darkness fled. Either way, she found herself staring into the face of death, and tried to kick and scream. She couldn't shout, because there was tape across her mouth and her legs were bound together. The white skull under a black motorcycle helmet just stared back.

"Ow, fuck, fuck, fuck you Grue," a white figure on the floor behind the skull-faced man managed. "There's always one who freaks out and..." he gasped for air, "… and starts shooting wildly."

"He's only bruised," a blonde girl Jamelia hadn't noticed before said, stepping out of a patch of shadows. They seemed barely deserving of that name; the shadows of the alleyway, compared to the terrible blackness of the darkness, seemed faded and grey. Still, they were enough to conceal someone in an almost skintight costume of blacks and purples, who wore a Grecian theatrical masque which left her lips exposed. "Aren't you glad we insisted you get that armour in your costume, Regent?" she said teasingly. "Although if you'd made it thicker, you won't have that nasty bruise on your collarbone."

"Fuck… ow, ow, ow, fuck you, Tatt," the boy – yes, he was just a boy, only in his mid-teens from the voice – gasped. "That was way too close to my head. Fuck you."

"Tell you what, I'm not up for that, but if you ask nicely, maybe Dr Bitch will kiss it better? And maybe a little more, if you're going to keep on playing up how hurt you are."

"Enough," the skull-faced man in black said. "What do we do with her and the other one?"

The blonde shrugged. "She wasn't expecting to see us here. That means she was here for another reason. Patrol?" Her eyes flickered to Jamelia. "No. She was responding to another call. But with the rally going on, they won't respond to her failure to check in for quite a while." She smiled down at the officer. "Imagine what could happen in that time, before your buddies show up. All alone, in the hands of some wicked criminals."

Jamelia kicked and struggled, but she was trussed up like a fly caught by spiders.

The girl leant in, squatting down by her. "There's no point being like that," she told Jamelia. "We're not going to kill you, and you're not going to get free. You really might as well settle down. It'll be easier for all of us, you included." The girl gave her a sunny grin. "After all, you don't like being out here, sent out to do the scut work with no backup, right?" she said. "I guess everyone else was too busy to help you. They were busy watching those good patriotic Americans down by the docks march up and down and shout about how anyone who isn't like them should go back to where they came from."

"Funny thing, isn't it? You don't see many of them with Native American heritage. They mostly seem to be pretty pale. Sort of like the 'where they came from' themselves is Europe. They don't seem to mention that, do they? Especially when all those guys you work with parrot the same kind of thing, and they don't even bother trying to hide that they think that all 'real Americans' look just like them. They sent you out here, and _of course_ they didn't say anything about it, but the way he looked at you didn't feel too good, did it?"

The girl's grin widened. "Hey, remember how your partner totally has sympathies that way, too?" she added, with casual afterthought. "Not really a surprise, is it?" She leaned forwards, and tucked a pigeon-feather behind Jamelia's ear. "He sent you into the alleyway first, didn't he? Out in the rain, while he talked to your witness. Wonder if he left anything out of his report." She patted the older woman on the head. "Nah, that's probably just vile insinuation from an untrustworthy criminal," she said. "I mean, it's not like he's done anything else that would suggest that he'd rather be off marching with the Patriots, right?"

"We'll leave them in the bathrooms in the building, out of the rain," the skull-faced man said. Behind him, a monstrous hound growled, and Jamelia stopped moving, trying to not even breathe. There was another figure standing back there, beside the hound. How many of them were there?

"And I bet your bosses are going to cover up what we took from there," the blonde continued, heedless. "Hey, I wonder _who _runs this place? What's worth taking, out in some run down office space? Well, I guess we're just like them, eh? Neither of us want news of this nice little toy getting out. So please don't think of it when you're tied up, 'kay?"

"We'd do worse, but Grue is a softie," the white-clad boy said, clutching his shoulder. His costume was almost as dirty as she was, from his fall in the alley. He hefted a sceptre he held in his uninjured arm. "I'm not going to enjoy this," he said, the grin on his face putting lie to the statement.

Then there was only pain, followed by the relief of blackness.

* * *

...

* * *

Just another attack by powered criminals, the after action report said. A minor parahuman gang, called the Undersiders. No police casualties and no other violence involved, so it was low priority.

When Jamelia asked around once she got out of hospital, she was told that the gang had stolen hard drives from the premises. The safes had been opened with the passwords, and emptied. It was suspected they were working for hire, carrying out industrial espionage.

When she asked again, more forcefully, she was put on compassionate leave and was booked in for a psychiatric evaluation.

* * *

...


	12. Namakarana 2-01

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Arc 2 – Namakarana**

**Chapter 2.01**

It was the howl of the wind against my window which woke me. Groggily I massaged my eyes and reached for my glasses, clambering out of bed.

The weather was vile outside. I couldn't tell if the sun had risen or not. I checked my clock again. 6:14 flashed at me. Well, it wouldn't be up, but it should have been getting light. It could have passed for midnight. It didn't even have the decency to be a dramatic thunderstorm. It was just relentless rain, apparently trying to conquer the land in the name of Poseidon.

I blinked, tugged my glasses down to the brink of my nose, and shifted my vision to the Other Place. Oh. It was raining blood. How wonderful. I stared out through gore-covered windows, barely able to see through the layer covering the dirty glass. The coppery scent crept in, just at the edge of my perception. Now, what on earth did that mean?

Probably nothing good. Well. That was a pretty shitty omen to start off any day, but it was particularly bad for the day of my evaluation. My chance to get out of here, to be free, for the first time in seventeen days. Two and a half weeks. Almost two-thirds of a month. And now that I'd thought that, I'd completely ruined any chance of getting back to sleep. I could feel butterflies in my stomach. And I quickly dropped out of the Other Place, in case that metaphor was literally true in that place.

At least I'd slept well. I was now on sleeping pills and they really helped. I simply _felt _better now I was getting seven hours rest a night, minimum. Usually more, because I was finding myself going to bed early simply because I was bored. And I wasn't remembering my dreams, either. I may have still been dreaming, because I often found my covers twisted around my legs when I woke, like I'd been trying to run, but I didn't remember them and that was good enough for me.

Of course, now I'd be thinking all day about how it was _raining blood _in the Other Place. That had been something I really didn't want to see. It was the smell which was the worst bit. When I was looking out through the glass, I could convince myself that it was just like something on the television. But the coppery ironness crept up on me, reminded me that it was as real as anything in the Other Place – and wasn't _that _a question?

I couldn't believe it was raining blood out there just because I was nervous. That made no sense. And I really didn't want to think about what else could be making something like that happen.

But if I was going to get up, it was time for my self-imposed exercise regime. Even if it was cold. And it _was_ cold. I glared out at the weather, quietly cursing it for waking me up. And being cold. But I couldn't change that – well I _almost certainly _couldn't change that – and if I was going to get up, I had to follow my routine. I had to get in shape. If I'd been stronger, maybe I could have fought the Emma-Sophia-Madison-demon thing. And the diet in the canteens here was horribly unhealthy. I half-suspected it was designed to keep the patients feeling too bloated to think of acting up.

Grumbling to myself, I began the first of many sit-ups.

When I was done, I was aching all over, and had almost managed to put what I'd seen out there out of my mind. Of course, as soon as I thought about how I'd put it out of my mind, I was thinking about it again, which wasn't the most helpful thing my mind could do. But I couldn't do anything about that.

Wait. Yes, I could. I took a deep breath, shifted my senses to the Other Place, and frowned. This had just been something I'd stumbled on in the past fortnight, when I'd been practicing – okay, playing around – with my power. It still wasn't easy. So, what would I need to do for this? What kind of construct would I need to build?

I would be affecting myself, so I looked over to the dirty mirror. I'd found it was easier if I just copied what I saw, rather than starting from scratch in my imagination. After a moment's concentration I exhaled, and my twin from the mirror stood in front of me. She was drenched in blood – it was all she was thinking of – which made her look sort of like Carrie. Her expression was locked in a grimace like a... no, it actually _was_ a theatrical mask, like one of those Greek ones, made of some pure white material. It was untouched by blood, apart from two dribbling streams coming from the corners of the eyes. It made her look like she was crying in fear.

I breathed in and then out, long and slow, and she flinched, masked face darting from side to side. Good. The construct hadn't fallen apart, like a few I'd tried. She would be able to sustain what I did next. I built iron chains around her, trapping her so she could barely move, and then her shape blurred as I inhaled her. She swirled like water down a plughole, and I felt the worry just drain away. I was smiling when I was done. Good. I couldn't let my worry ruin things for me today.

I changed from my sleeping-pyjamas to my going-around-during-the-day pyjamas, and then realised I really should have a shower. Gathering my things, I headed for the bathroom. I was in luck; waking early meant that I didn't have to wait for it.

The shower may have been vaguely patronising in how it was clearly designed to stop us from doing anything but going in and pulling the 'on' lever, but it was warm and I had it all to myself. My missing fingernails were starting to grow back, but I still had to wear latex gloves because they weren't meant to get wet. The pink of new skin was everywhere on them, but at least they weren't infected. I had to keep an eye on them, though. I'd hate to lose a finger.

By the time I was done, I could hear other people stirring. I dried myself off, and went to grab breakfast from the canteen. Just a small one. Hopefully this would be the last breakfast I had here, and it wasn't nice enough that I wanted to relish it. The toast tasted like cardboard in my mouth. It was bad enough that I flipped to the Other Place, but that just managed to add a metallic taste to the cardboard. I went and groaned in the bathroom for a bit, but didn't actually throw up, so I just returned to the common room in Wilson.

Sam and Leah were awake, sitting next to each other on the couch. It looked like they'd picked up breakfast already, but were eating it through here.

Sometimes I sort of thought there was something going on between those two. I wasn't sure, though, and they'd tried to talk to me about boys – which had been a pretty short conversation, because I didn't have much to say beyond 'Boys don't seem to be as bad to each other as girls'. It confused me, but it'd be really awkward to pry, so I did my best to ignore it."Nervous?" Leah asked, half-turning to look at me.

I nodded mutely.

Sam nodded at me, looking over the top of today's paper. She had managed to get one of the copies from breakfast today. "Don't muck this up," she said. "If you come back here in tears, it'll be really embarrassing."

"I'll try not to," I said, smiling weakly. "I don't want to be in here any longer than I have to." I paused. "Not that I want to be rid of you, but…"

"Oh, spare me that," she said, stretching. "I've got an evaluation next week too, if my next lot of blood tests pass. If you're out, then I'll have someone to talk to." She winced. "That'd be nice. It was Leah making herself ill that… uh, got me wobbly. So pass it and we can meet up weekend after next or something."

That was life in a short-to-medium-wing ward, from what I'd seen and heard. There was a pretty constant flow of new faces. Emily had left a few days ago, and there were two new girls, Tori and Henna, who'd come since I'd arrived. "I wonder when Kirsty has her next evaluation?" I said.

Sam looked back up from her paper. "Who?" she asked, distracted.

"Kirsty. Next evaluation?"

"Who?" She frowned, a blank expression on her face.

I stared back just as blankly. "Kirsty. Scars on her face. Worse than mine. In Room Four."

"Oh! Her." Sam blinked, still looking somewhat blank. "No idea," she said. "I don't talk to her."

"I can't recall a single conversation I've had with her," Leah chimed in. "Just the…" she traced lines on her face, and winced, looking at me. "Sorry," she said quickly, "at least yours are just sort of… pink. Not like hers."

I gave a one-shouldered shrug. No, Kirsty didn't talk to people. She just stayed in her room. I hadn't seen her in any of the sessions, either. I'd signed up for quite a few, because – dear God – the boredom was the worst thing in here. And it also meant that I appeared to be keen and willing and taking active control of my wellbeing and everything else that Hannah, as the wing supervisor, said we should be.

I'd set myself the goal that I'd be out of here as soon as possible. And if I managed it today, it'd be just seventeen days.

I was fairly proud of myself for that.

I looked at the clock. "Well," I said, "about two hours to go. I… I think I'm ready. I just want it to be over and done with."

"Oh dear, no!" Leah said, frowning as she looked at me. "You can't go to your evaluation meeting looking like that!"

"Like what?" I said, confused.

"Like that!" She stood up and she put her too-thin hands on her too-thin waist. "You're coming with me, and I'm going to brush your hair properly!"

"They don't let me have a hairbrush or a hairdryer," I protested. "I know it's not that great, but it's the best I can manage."

She grinned at me. "Not the best I can do. Let me go ask Hannah for them."

I smiled back. It was strange. I'd missed this kind of thing so badly. Emma and I used to be like sisters. I hadn't had any real friends for a year and more.

"Technically, it's not breaking the rules," she added. "After all, I'm the one who's using them. So I won't even get in trouble." She paused. "Hopefully."

Yes, that was the worry. Because I was one of the patients in the wing marked in my files as a suicide risk, there were little perfectly normal things which they didn't let me have. But hopefully I'd be out of here soon.

And when I was out of here, I'd be able to keep proper notes on what my powers could do, without having to be worried about nurses reading them and getting worried about legitimate observations. I couldn't trust them not to read anything I wrote. I was sure they read my homework. Especially some of the science homework, where I'd got help from one of the nurses. I just knew, somehow, they'd misunderstand perfectly innocent and accurate records like 'Dr Samuels is bloated – rotting flesh around lips. Strong smell of alcohol mixed with gasoline. Blood stains on fingers'.

It was very unfair.

I had concluded that probably meant that either he had a drinking problem which he was trying to cover up, or had killed someone in a drink-driving accident. Or possibly both. I wasn't sure what the rotting lips meant. Maybe something romance-related, like 'he's lying when he says he loves his partner' or 'his lips are rotting because he's a habitual liar'. Or possibly just mouth cancer. But I was just guessing there.

That's what a notebook which I could actually record my observations in would help with. There were some elements of shared symbolism – for example, another girl in another wing who also had anorexia had shared symbolism with Leah – so if I could keep a list of shared elements, it could help me work out what each thing meant.

Stupid useless obtuse power which didn't give me straight answers.

My evaluation was at 10:15, and apart from the fact that I'd spent the hour beforehand feeling sick to my stomach with nerves, I was feeling ready. My hair was washed and dried and brushed, I'd spent time in front of the mirror making sure I didn't look crazy, and I'd practiced some of the questions that Sam and Leah had been asked before. I wasn't sure what this entailed, but I was about as ready as I could be.

I had set myself some ground rules for this meeting. No looking into the Other Place. No wool-gathering when I was meant to be listening. No breaking down into tears or anything like that. I was going to be on my best behaviour. My dad was waiting for me, and I didn't want to let him down.

"How are you feeling?" he asked me, just outside the room where it was going to be. That was the first thing he said.

"Nervous," I admitted.

"You'll be fine," he said. He was trying to assure me, I could tell, and checking the Other Place I could see that his fires were damped, wavering and flickering in a fretful way. In the fire, I could see images, dancing like ash. Putting them together, most of them seemed to be him, staring into space. I thought he'd been missing me. I'd been missing him too.

"I'll try to be," I said weakly, returning my vision to the normal. He gave me a hug, and I hugged back.

"Good luck," he said.

Going into the room, Dr Vanderbough was there, and Hannah, and a few other people I couldn't remember the names of or didn't recognise. There was one of the doctors who I'd seen around the place, a woman in a neat black suit and glasses who looked like an administrator and who was probably there from the school trying to get me out of here ASAP if she wasn't from the Men in Black, and a few others.

I sat up straight. I was careful to look attentive and smile. I was a perfectly well-balanced and normal girl who had just happened to have a nervous breakdown when locked in a locker filled with fermented tampons. Which, when you thought about it, was a perfectly natural and understandable reaction.

Honestly, I was pretty surprised I wasn't more traumatised by it. I think I would have been, if it hadn't been for the thing with the insects and the nails, which sort of made mundane things look rather less meaningful, and also gave me something else to focus on. So what if I had nightmares? I could live with them.

I'd considered what would have happened if I hadn't got superpowers from that experience. That would have been, like, possibly just the _worst_. Wow. That would have been just terrible. Emma and co almost certainly wouldn't have done it if they knew they were going to give me psychometry and the capacity to make invisible monsters which obeyed my every order.

Well, they had done it. And here I was now. It was just as well I was a good person, I thought to myself. If I was as bad as them, I could probably make their lives very unpleasant and they wouldn't even know it was me.

So they had better not try anything again.

"So, Taylor," Hannah asked. "How are you feeling?"

I put on my best brave face. "A little bit nervous," I said. "But generally better apart from today and," I spread my hands, "this whole thing."

"That's good, that's good. And don't worry, it's okay to be nervous. We're just going to have a talk – I've already showed them my notes on your progress… which is very promising, by the way. So, shall we get started?"

…

"And… well, that's about it," Dr Vanderbough said. "I don't believe she's at any immediate risk to herself, and so she can be safely discharged."

I wasn't listening to that conversation. Well, okay, clearly I was. But I wasn't listening to it in any normal way. I'd had my talk, and then they called my dad in. I was waiting in the anteroom, eating biscuits one of the nurses had left me and drinking hot chocolate. The chair was quite comfortable, even in the Other Place where it was overstuffed and slightly warm to the touch. Considering the weather, I didn't mind a little extra warmth. The blood-rain in the Other Place had thinned, and most of the liquid coming from the sky was now water. I couldn't bring myself to be curious about it, though. Not when I had other things to think about.

I looked very normal staring out of the window, especially if you couldn't see what I was actually staring at. A pair of little eyeless china-doll cherubs, holding up a cracked television screen. I'd sent an angel made of barbed-wire with a CCTV camera for a head into the room to observe where my dad was meeting with the doctors and staff to talk about my future.

With a little experimental fiddling, I'd even managed to get the TV-screen to show me the normal world, rather than the Other Place.

Actually, now that I thought of it, that seemed like a very promising development. I had just shown it was possible to see things in the normal world, while in the Other Place. So maybe I could overlay the normal world on the Other Place, or have the normal world shown on my eyelids, so I could change between the two by opening and closing my eyes?

Thoughts for later. This was what I needed a notepad for. Right now, I had a meeting to spy on.

"So she's better?" my dad asked.

Dr Vanderbough pursed his lips. "We believe she doesn't need to be an in-patient anymore," he said cautiously. "As I said earlier, I would strongly recommend that she have regular meetings with a therapist for at least a few months. She improved notably when I put her on some mild sleeping pills so she was getting proper amounts of rest – she was having nightmares every night, and the hallucinations seemed to have been contributed to by that. Ideally, her doses should be lowered so she doesn't become dependent on them. They should only be a short term measure."

I didn't like the sound of that. I liked being able to sleep. Also, I _was _'better', because I'd never gone crazy in the first place.

"She's going to need you through the next bit," Hannah said, folding her hands on her lap. "Here, things are stable and calm. She may find it more difficult in normal day to day life. The return to school will be especially stressful."

"I've observed she has trust issues," Dr Vanderbough says. "She doesn't open up to anyone. I've had to coax every little step we've made out of her. I'm fairly certain that she's telling the truth about the bullying, with no more exaggeration than would be normal. A long-term, systematic bullying campaign like that would explain several things I've noted about her. It's a very normal reaction, but it's getting in the way of her recovery. She seems to care about you – she talked about you fairly frequently. You're going to have to be a solid place for her to stand on, someone who won't judge her for what she tells you."

The betrayal stung. How dare he tell my dad I had trust issues? What gave him the right? He'd said that things in that room were between me and him, and then he'd gone and – how dare he! That nasty man-spider, worming his way in to…

… huh. A bit of self-awareness caught me. Wow. That chain of thought had been outright paranoid.

Maybe… uh. Maybe they had a point.

I slumped down, cupping my hands over my mouth, and tried to control my sudden hyperventilation. So he thought that the way I had no reason to trust anyone, adults or children, was getting in the way of my recovery? That was ridiculous, surely. But why… why hadn't I told my dad I was being bullied earlier? Why hadn't I tried harder to get help from the school?

Oh, I had my reasons. I had plenty of reasons. He couldn't have done anything. I didn't want him to worry. I was ashamed. I'd tried to tell the school earlier, when it had been less bad, and it hadn't helped. If I told on those three now, no one would help me and they'd just step up the bullying, so I'd just tough it out until I graduated and could go off and leave them behind. All part of the familiar litany of reasons which I'd repeated again and again.

At what point had the reasons taken over from trying to do anything?

Well. He knew about the bullying now. And I'd bet anything that the school did, from the police and him kicking up a fuss. In a twisted way, I had leverage now. After all, if they let it go on, and I really did kill myself, they'd be in deep PR shit. I wasn't going to do that, of course. I'd never been suicidal. But they didn't know that. And I had my collection of notes on the bullying, all those records of phone calls, and a diary of events.

At the very least, I should let my dad know about the existence of the diary. That thing with the locker… that was a step up. Way, way up. I could have died from that. I still didn't have full feeling in my hands. I'd never thought Emma would do something like that. Adults might want to shrug off name-calling and stealing my stuff as childish things. They couldn't shrug off this kind of thing. Especially men, I bet. I'd just have to say 'locker full of used tampons' and they'd be freaking out.

I didn't think they'd try to kill me, but I hadn't thought they'd do something which could really hurt me right up until they did. It wasn't paranoia when they might actually be out to get you.

The door to the meeting room opened, and my dad was the first one out. He was smiling widely, in an open, relieved way which managed to make me feel guilty about how much he must have been worrying. I rose, and forced myself to smile back.

"It's good news?" I asked.

And there was just a little bit of me which pragmatically pointed out that if I owned up to some things which didn't matter, it would be easier to keep the fact that I was a parahuman from him. I'd really be protecting him from that. He didn't need to know I was a more bizarre Thinker/Master mix than anyone I'd been able to find online. Not yet. Not until I was sure I wanted anyone to know. I couldn't let him be threatened by people who might want to use me.

Compared to that, telling him the truth about the bullying would be nothing.

One small step at a time.


	13. Namakarana 2-02

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 2.02**

As I dressed, I realized how strange it felt to be wearing normal clothes again. It was funny – I'd found the constant pyjamas to be infantilising, another sign of how little we were trusted with our own safety. And sure, they _were_, but they were also kind of comfy. My jeans felt itchy and tight by comparison.

I said my farewells, and left with a bag full of pamphlets and advice leaflets. I'd scribbled Sam and Leah's mobile numbers on one. I didn't have a mobile, while as Arcadia girls they probably had Tinkerfab smartphones, but at least I might be able to contact them once they were out of there. I hadn't expected to make my first sort-of friends in years in a psychiatric hospital, but I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me that the place they kept crazy people was less crazy than high school.

It was still raining as I walked out the door, so Dad sprinted for the car and brought it around just in front of the entrance. I still ended up soaked getting my stuff from the hospital to the trunk.

"I only just got into these things," I said to Dad as I dried my glasses on my top. "Guess I'll have to get into my pyjamas as soon as I get home."

He grinned back, and frowned. "How are your hands?" he asked.

"Better, better," I said. I peeled off my left latex glove, showing him my hand. "They're not oozing any more. One of the nurses in the hospital was seeing to them, and she said the main thing now is keeping them dry and clean, and I need to keep on taking the antibiotics." I tapped my ring and little finger with my thumb. "I can't feel that very well, and those two fingers are a bit stiff, but I have hand exercises which are meant to help."

"Mmm," he said, and paused. "Are you hungry?" he asked carefully.

I was. I hadn't had much for breakfast because of the nerves, and it was now mid-afternoon. I'd packed as fast as I could, but there had still been paperwork to do and talks about what to do if I had any suicidal urges and so on. "Yeah," I said. "Just… please, nothing with fries in. They served them way too much in there."

"Does Italian sound good?" he asked hopefully.

"Pasta with proper toppings that isn't just mac-and-cheese? Yes!" It sounded really good to me.

He started the engine. "That's good, then. I'm pretty hungry too." He shook his head. "Wish the weather had let up, though. The forecast said it was going stop by noon."

It was early afternoon, but the weather had barely cleared up at all. The sky was iron-grey, and I could barely see the gas stations and fast food restaurants by the side of the road. Their light was masked by the rain which hammered down against the car. The windscreen wipers were working full out. Dad was taking it carefully, and I was glad of it. I'd hate to get out of a psychiatric hospital and immediately wind up back in a normal one – or worse.

Of course, he always drove very carefully. No matter what.

Static hissed as I flicked through the stations.

"… love hurts, I'm telling you, but sweet babe~, what can you do? But I say  
"listen, it's simply the way that liberals try to shut down anyone who speaks against them. She's calling me a bigot, but she can't deny the facts, and those facts say that Japanese immigrants are involved in mass people-smuggling operations, and have ties to the sex trade. They're a criminal influence and  
"what will you do if your loved ones fall ill? Without health insurance, you could suffer an unexpected illness and  
"Florida Man gave a public statement saying 'Sure, he was a real smart bad guy, but then I remembered that his power was all about bein' smart and nothin' about being immune to ma shotgun and so  
"casualty reports from Dubai are still coming in, but they're already over ten thousand. Almost the whole city is flooded, and even from up here, you can see the bodies in the flooded streets. It almost looks like Venice from a distance, but then you see the fallen skyscrapers and the damage to the…"

My dad reached out and firmly turned off the radio. "Don't channel-hop, Taylor," he said evasively. "Either find some music or turn it off."

I frowned. "Dad," I said cautiously. "What was that talking about casualties?"

He said nothing.

"Dad?"

He sighed. "The Leviathan attacked Dubai last night," he said. "I didn't pay much attention to the news this morning, but… it's bad."

"Oh," I said.

"Yeah." He sighed. "There's always that little bit of guilt from being relieved that it was nowhere near here," he said, knuckles whitening around the steering wheel.

Another Endbringer attack. Yes. My dad was right. There always was that little frisson of guilt when you heard that you'd been spared an attack by one of those… one of those _things_.

There were three of them. They'd appeared in the nineties, one after the other. The Behemoth had come first, tearing its way out of a volcanic eruption, then the Leviathan had risen from the Pacific Ocean in a giant tsunami, and the Simurgh had descended from the moon in a total eclipse over Europe. They attacked a city each, every year, ever since each of them had appeared. "Endbringer" was synonymous with disaster, with calamity and death. Sometimes they could be driven away, but they always caused left devastation and mass death behind.

I'd never known a world without them, but I was old enough to know that they were why everything was getting worse.

Could that be why it had been raining blood when I'd woken up?

But Dubai was… like, almost on the other side of the world, somewhere in the Middle East. Would it really have _that _much of an effect? Well, I guessed the only way I could find out was to pay close attention to the weather in future. And start to worry if it started raining blood again, which was a perfectly natural reaction.

I blinked. Oh, I was feeling concerned about that again. The construct which had been trapping it must have fallen apart. They did that after a few hours at best. Some of them only lasted seconds, if I made it to do a specific thing. I'd managed to make one which had lasted over a day, but that had been hard. I had to be incredibly precise when mentally constructing it to stop it falling apart with time, and have you ever tried holding a very detailed image in your mind while adding more and more complexity to it? It's really difficult.

"So, how's work?" I asked, both to distract myself and break the awkward silence in the car.

My dad glanced my way briefly. "Things have calmed down a bit," he said. "It's still simmering a bit, but… well, I mean, it's tense, but that's better than it was. Right until some idiot does something stupid again," he muttered under his breath.

I pretended I hadn't heard that. "I meant that thing you were talking about last time you called. You know, the thing you said you couldn't talk about?"

"Yes, I… uh, still can't really talk about it. Talks are still ongoing, and I can't even tell you because there are some people who really wouldn't like some of the things which we're talking about."

I blanched. "… it's not illegal, is it?" I asked.

"No. Much as some people would like to stop us from…" He winced. "Uh, can you forget I just said that?"

"Said what?" I said innocently, even if I was already starting to put things together.

"Good girl," he said. "I mean, uh, thanks Taylor."

My dad was with the Dockworker's Union, and just like pretty much everything else in the city, it was suffering. The ships just weren't coming in. From what he said, he spent his time trapped between the companies who just wanted to fire everyone and bring in new workers for a fraction of the cost and the more radical elements of the labour movement.

His sympathies, I suspected, lay with the radicals. He approved of the cooperatives and workers' associations which had become a feature in the inner cities. Sometimes, I wondered if having to support me was stopping him from really throwing himself into it. I knew he worried about money and how stable his job was.

But just up ahead there was a stark reminder that things could have been a lot, lot worse for us. By the side of the freeway, sprawling over an abandoned industrial estate, was a shanty town. Some people called them 'new Hoovervilles'. I guess it was because they really, really sucked. Shanty town made more sense as a name, though.

I tried not to stare out at the mobile homes extended into permanent shacks and the abandoned factories and office blocks cannibalised into squats. The taller buildings looked like they'd contracted some kind of skin condition, their windows haphazardly boarded over or barricaded up. Everywhere, corrugated iron and blue plastic roofing channelled small rivers down onto the already sodden ground.

The government hated these places, I knew that much. They were hives of gang activity, the ideal spot for ramshackle drug-labs or whole armouries of unlicensed weapons. There were squat clearance operations – I'd heard people on the news complaining that too much money was spent in road-and-housebuilding programmes and not enough on getting rid of these places – but more always sprung up. When areas of the city were abandoned or empty, it wasn't hard for people to break into a building and start living there. And since there simply weren't enough jobs to go around in the Greatest Depression, there were more than enough homeless people willing to break the law to get out of the weather.

Up in the rainy sky, I thought I could see the lurking shape of an insect-like government Tinkerfab helicopter. No doubt it was loaded up with sensor equipment which didn't care about the rain. But I only saw it for a moment, and then it was gone.

If the sight of the shanty town was bad in the real world, it was worse in the Other Place. The entire place was cloaked in an oily fog, blowing downwind. When the car drove through it, it smelt like burnt tires and stale sweat and misery. And as for the scabrous buildings which bled rust into the red-tinged rain, as for the half-alive slimy slug-like trailers, as for the shuffling figures I could see with my perfect vision in the Other Place… well, the less said about them the better. But I wanted to get away.

We drove on and left the shanty town behind.

…

I'd regained my appetite by the time we got to the Italian place. It was in Brockton Bay proper, fairly close to the Boardwalk. As we parked, dad and I pulled a face in unison. The rain still hadn't let up. The walk to the restaurant still left us pretty damp, but we got a table close to a radiator. Inside, there was a slight smell of wood smoke, and swing playing faintly in the background. The slow drive meant we'd missed the lunch crowd, leaving us in a mostly empty restaurant.

I was glad that that there weren't too many other people around. I was going to be saying some things I didn't want overheard, and it was going to be hard enough to admit some of them without looking over my shoulder every five seconds.

Just in case, I checked the Other Place. The restaurant was reassuringly bland by the standards of that world. Yes, the wood panelling was cracked and splintering revealing raw concrete underneath, and yes, there was a low level of filth everywhere, but there were no mysterious bloody stains or toxic cloying emotional clouds. I winced as the off-tune music scraped against my nerves, but it was just noise and there was no mysterious screaming. I should probably check the food when it arrived, but at least I had no reason to try to talk my dad into going somewhere else.

"Taylor?" I looked away from the window, to my dad and the waitress. "What do you want to drink?"

I blinked, and quickly scanned the menu. "Uh… just water, please," I said.

"There's no reason to skimp," Dad said after the waitress had left. "This is a treat."

"I just felt in a water mood," I said. "I didn't feel like anything sweet."

He nodded. "So…" he began, and then didn't say anything. We sat there in mutual awkwardness for far too long. 'I'm not crazy'? Would that be a good thing to say to break the conversational silence?

"It's good to have you back," he said eventually.

"Thank you," I said.

Oh God, what was I meant to say? Was I just going to admit it? Should I wait until the food had come? But I was hungry and what if he lost his temper when I told him some of the things I had been keeping from him? To avoid having to talk, I hid behind the menu, reading it like my life depended on it.

The waitress returned with my water and Dad's Coke. "Are you ready to order?" she asked. "Do you want starters?"

"Taylor?"

"Uh… no starters." I didn't want to delay the main course. "Just a main for me."

"Okay," my dad said. "So…"

"…yeah. I'll… um," I scanned down the list, "I'll have the spaghetti alle vongole," I said, and paused. "Uh, unless… how much garlic is on this?"

"Oh no, we don't put too much garlic on here," the waitress said.

"Then, yes, the vongole."

"And you?"

My dad pursed his lips. "Um… I'll just have the carbonara."

"Great!" She took the menus. My cover was gone. I'd have to talk and I was dreading it and I was working to try to hide the way my stomach was churning. I couldn't do it. I couldn't talk to him. I couldn't come clean. "Anything else?"

"Uh," I said. "Where are the bathrooms?"

She turned and pointed. "Just take that passageway over there, and there are signs. Ladies are on the left."

"Thank you," I said, standing. "I'll be back in a moment."

The bathrooms were acceptable, and I shut myself in one of the cubicles. Sitting down on the toilet, I hyperventilated into my cupped hands. I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn't do it. I also needed the toilet for real, so I did my business and then stared at myself in the small mirror over the sink.

"Pull yourself together, Taylor," I told my reflection, trying to talk myself into it. "What's there to be afraid of? He knows you're being bullied. He knows that Emma, Sophia and Madison were doing it. You're not going to be admitting to anything he doesn't already know."

"If he knows how long it was going on, he might do something stupid," I answered. "I don't want him getting in trouble. You know he gets angry and tries to control it."

"And you don't think he won't do it if I don't tell him?" I pointed out. "At least this way I can be honest with him. If I come clean, he'll trust me more and we- _I_ might be able to stop him getting too angry. After all, that's the big thing. He already knows. I can't keep it a secret anymore. And I bet he's been worrying and worrying about it ever since he found out."

I sighed. It made sense, I just didn't want it to. When it came down to it, I was ashamed. I didn't want to look weak, like I couldn't do anything. Even though I _couldn't_ have done anything to stop it, for all the years it had been going, for all of high school.

I shifted into the Other Place and glanced around, noting the snow that dusted the broken and cracked sink in front of me. Snow. Hah. So someone used this sink frequently for cocaine, I guessed. I leant forwards and took a tiny sniff. Yes, the snow smelt of dependency, need, and a desperate hunger for something which wasn't food. I shook my head.

It was so easy to make the construct from my secrecy, my fear of telling, all those years of bullying. I just had to think of it and pour it into my breath.

And the product of this concentration looked like me. It looked very much like me. It was me without the scars. Not a monster; just me. And – God – I could read my own expression so well. She was scared. She was trying to be strong, but the fear and apathy and relentless oppression had got to her, so she was just trying to walk through life and not be noticed.

Then I noticed the staples around the edge of her face and the redness around her eyes, and realised that that expression was just another mask, locked onto her face. It was too rigid to be a real face.

A morbid thought struck me. This construct, if it worked like I thought it would, might well be able to force people to not tell things with as much strength as I'd felt about not wanting to tell about the bullying. That was scary.

Maybe I shouldn't tell after all. Yes, that would be the sensible thing to do. It wasn't like I could make a difference. And I didn't want to worry him. I'd made my mind up, but having just made this construct to help pluck up the courage, maybe I shouldn't. After all, this couldn't be natural.

Or maybe the construct – Madame Secret, I was going to call her – was just affecting me too. I gritted my teeth. No. I was going ahead with this.

It was hard to trap her. Very hard. She was strong, perhaps the strongest construct I had ever made yet, and she fought to slip out of her binds. Worse, she attacked back, with waves of apathy, waves of fear, waves of I-shouldn't-be-doing-this-there's-no-need-to-make-a-fuss. A chain snaked around one arm, pulling it tight against the wall, but as it dived to weave around her arm she managed to wrench the arm loose from the wall, uncaring that the bone audibly snapped.

This wasn't working, I thought. I was on a fool's errand. I should just give up and – I exhaled, sweating, no! That wasn't me. I could feel her hammering my mind and I swayed, my vision momentarily greying. I clenched my teeth, panting, throwing everything just into holding her where she was. And I was losing. She dislocated both arms to get free of the bond around her shoulders, and wriggled like a squirming insect out of the chains on her legs. One desperate last attempt got her around the throat, but she was breaking that too.

This wasn't working. She was just too slippery. I needed a new approach. I glared at her, and two bloodshot eyes glared back at me from behind her mask.

I laughed, a small giggle escaping my lips. It all made sense.

I let go of the chains and she rushed in towards me, fingers twisted into claws. And then I exhaled a cloud of rusty butterflies right into Madame Secret's face. They tore her mask off, and all of a sudden the resistance stopped. I took the chance to trap her tighter than a fly in a spider's web. She was weak, compliant as the chains trussed her up tight. I tried not to stare at her face, because she had no skin under the mask which now lay on the filthy floor. There was just red muscle and fat and the gouges from where the staples had been, weeping blood.

I'd cut her open, exposed her raw, bloody core, and now she was helpless.

Yes. I could tell my dad. The freedom was wonderful. I stooped down, and picked up the fallen mask. It was, and wasn't real. I could feel it, but it felt fizzy, almost like froth on a milkshake. I glanced from it to Madame Secret, and back again. And this – this was _interesting_. A mask of secrets. I could see that it wasn't alive, wasn't aware like she was. I focussed and let the mask flow back into me, leaving the greater construct still intact. Yes, I could make constructs which weren't beings in their own right.

I inhaled Madame Secret, and then returned to the normal world and checked my appearance. I washed the sweat from my face, and adjusted my hair.

"Are you feeling fine?" my dad asked. I could hear his concern.

I coughed, and tried to look embarrassed. "There wasn't much fibre in the meals in the canteen," I muttered, looking away from him.

He coughed. "Well. Uh. That won't be a problem now you're back home," he tried.

It looked like it had worked. "Yeah, I'll be glad to be home in my room with my bed and my books and…" I groaned as a realisation hit me.

"What is it?" my dad asked.

I winced. "Nothing really," I admitted. "Just remembered that I think I forgot to trade books back with Leah. I think I still have some of hers and she has some of mine." And she had come off rather better for the trade, I didn't say. I had thought I read quickly before I met her. I had been quite soundly disabused of that by her ability to finish a 300 page book in an hour or two.

"So… it seems like you, uh, met some people in… that place," he said. "That's good."

"Yes, it was," I said. I took a breath. "But I wasn't nervous about that," I said. "I was nervous because… well, I've been trying to get the courage to tell you something. I've probably been trying to do this for a long time, but now? Now, I think I can do it."

"Are… are you sure?" he asked.

I nodded. "As ready as I've ever been," I said. "More, really. But… uh, please, don't interrupt me. At least not at first. I'm afraid that if I stop, I might not be able to go on. And it might be a bit jumbled up."

He played with his napkin, and swallowed. "Go on," he said.

It was easy, with what I'd done to Madame Secret. I knew I couldn't have done it before. I would have choked up.

"It started… probably after I got back from summer camp in '09," I began. "I mean, I'm not sure if there were some things I'd missed. I still hadn't got over Mum dying when I went off, and I'd offended Emma or something beforehand. I don't really remember, and when I tried asking, she just said she didn't want to hang around with a loser like me anymore. But there had to be some reason, right?" I sighed.

"I don't know. I do know that when I got back, she didn't want to hang around with me anymore. She'd found a new best friend – Sophia – and they'd make fun of me. And that hurt, but… I thought it was going to get better. You know? Like, it still hurt because Emma had been my best friend, but I tried to hang around with other people and I tried to see if we could make-up or something."

"I don't know how they managed it, but it just ended up that I wasn't someone that 'cool kids' talked to, or hung around with. I'm not even sure how it happened myself. There wasn't a single point where everything changed. Everyone just drifted away from me. And the pranks were starting. Like, one day I found all the lead from one of my… you know, those clicky pencil things? All the lead was gone. I had to keep my pencil case in my bag at all times. I had to go and get one of the locker-room lockers, rather than a hallway locker, because they have better locks and," I laughed bitterly, "look what that got me. If I'd had a hallway locker, they're so bad I could probably have just broken out from the inside. You can open them by kicking the door hard in the right place, everyone knows that."

"But yeah. If I didn't watch my bags, things would go missing. People wouldn't get out of my way in the corridors and I'd 'accidentally' be pushed over. But the worst thing was the whispering. The name-calling. And… well, Madison – she really joined in early last year – just did stupid pranks and got me laughed at, and Sophia is just plain mean, but Emma knew all my secrets. She knew how to make things _hurt_. And…" I felt my eyes begin to burn, "and I was so lonely, because no one was really talking to me and I couldn't do a thing to stop it. No one who found out cared enough. And most of it was 'just' words. Notes in my locker. Slipped into my bag. Sent to my email address. Spoken behind my back. Spoken in _front _of my back. As if I just didn't matter one little bit."

"I'm… sure the words were very bad," my dad began, and I couldn't let him finish. I just _couldn't_. I didn't want to hear that from him.

"No, that's the thing, Dad," I said softly. I rubbed my fingers against the cold side of my glass, looking for the right phrasing. "You probably… like, got in fights at school when you were a kid, or something like that?"

He shifted slightly uncomfortably in his seat. "Well, yeah, that kind of thing happens."

"That's a boy thing. If they'd… like, got me near the bike sheds and started punching me, then there'd have been bruises. And I could have at least tried to punch them back, which – God knows – I really wanted to sometimes. But pretty much everything was just words," I said bitterly. "Words behind my back, or in front of it. Words and little petty things which hurt. Anyone who cared what the popular kids thought didn't want to hang around with me, and…" I shrugged, "well. Never enough proof for anyone to listen to me. And it didn't help that I'm so freakishly tall and… and have no figure worth speaking of and aren't pretty either. All of those things were things which make me a target. About the only way it could have been worse is if I was fat."

"You are pretty," my Dad protested, unable to hold his tongue.

"I'm not," I said, crossing my arms protectively. "Emma is pretty. She does modelling. Sophia is all athletic. Madison is 'cute' and has boys trailing her like stupid puppies. I'm just a beanpole." I sighed. "I had told a teacher. Mrs Bellinghausen. And she talked with them and they said they hadn't done anything and nothing came of it. And then she went on maternity leave and as soon as she was out of the picture, things got worse because I was a tattletale. Because there was _never any proof_, and _no one cared_. Just words. Just excuses," I almost snarled.

I sighed. "And then just before Christmas, things got better. They just left me alone. They ignored me. I was happy to be ignored, you know. And because of that, there were people who were willing to talk to me. I don't know if they told other people to let up on me, or whether those others had just been afraid that they'd be targeted like I was. Things were getting better." I paused. "And then right after Christmas. Wham. Guess they just wanted me to let my guard down."

"So that's about it. I made sure I made notes on it all. Back home, in my room, I've got a diary of events. There's much more than I can summarise here."

There was silence, broken only by the rain outside and recorded swing playing in the background. My dad was pale. "Taylor, I… I didn't know," he said.

"I know," I said sadly. "I didn't want anyone to know. It… it was so hard to tell you this." He didn't know the half of it. I'd had to cut the face off one of my inner demons to do this.

"I should have known. I should have noticed how… how for two years, you weren't talking about Emma all the time. How you never went around to her house. How she never called. I was just a… just a terrible dad. I should have seen."

Yeah, you should have, I thought. Of course I didn't say that. Dad had almost fallen apart after Mum had died, and he still hadn't been all there at the beginning. And I'd been hiding it from him. It wasn't fair to blame him when I'd been working so hard to keep secrets from him.

I guess that's a useful talent.

"So what are you going to do?" I asked in a small voice.

He sighed, resting his head in his hands. "I don't know," he said. "I… I don't know."

The arrival of the food was a welcome relief.


	14. Namakarana 2-03

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 2.03**

I dropped my bags on my bedroom floor, and flopped face-first onto my bed. Home, sweet home. A bedroom which wasn't an institutional cell, carefully designed so I couldn't hurt myself. A bed which was soft, and didn't have plastic sheeting covering the mattress.

It was great.

I lay there for a while, torn between the need to unpack and the desire to just lie there.

"Taylor? Can you come through here please?" Dad called from just outside my room, making the decision for me. I pulled myself off the bed with only a minimum of grumbling.

"What is it?" I asked, poking my head around the door.

He looked very awkward. "Here," he said, handing a battered mobile phone to me. "I got this for you."

I blinked. "Uh," I began.

"It's not for fun," he said. "It's just a prepaid, with a bit of credit inside. It's for emergencies. Um. You know, if you… if you start feeling bad. Or really need to talk to me. Or… uh, feel like you might be about to do something… silly."

I supposed that made sense, if you thought I actually had been suicidal. Of course, I hadn't, but I could see how much it was costing him emotionally to hand me a phone. I took it. "I'll do my very best to never use it," I told him. "I don't want to end up back in that place either."

That wasn't quite the right thing to say, I knew as soon as the words left my mouth, and he frowned at me. "Don't not use it when you should," he told me. "I might not like mobiles, but I'd like something happening to you a lot less."

"I know, I only meant…" I trailed away. "Thanks, Dad," I said, giving him a hug. "Thanks for thinking of something like that. I promise I won't use it frivolously and… I think I am better, I really am. The psychiatrist said I probably just had a panic attack in the locker. Things should be fine as long as I don't wind up in somewhere like then again. And that's not likely, right?"

He looked slightly more comfortable at that. "I hope so," he said. "I really do." He paused. "Uh, have you… do you need help unpacking?"

"I'll be fine," I said. "I was… ah, just having a little lie down before I started."

"Don't leave it too long," he said. He massaged the back of his neck. "Anyway, I've taken the next two days off work, and," he coughed, "we'll need to talk about your return to school. When you're feeling ready, of course."

The bottom felt like it dropped out of my stomach. "Yes," I said weakly.

"I'm not going to try to push you back too quickly," he said, "but you do need to think about that."

"I know," I said. I took a deep breath. "I know. I'll… I was doing the work they sent me when I was in the hospital! I'll… yeah, I'll need to see about handing that in. And getting some more." I tried my best to put on a brave face in front of him, but I wasn't having much luck.

"Are you feeling okay?"

"I'd tried not to think about when I was going back," I said in a small voice.

He winced. "Sorry," he said. "But… no, we'll think about that later."

"I know I have to," I said.

"I did check out what'd be required for you to transfer," he said, "but the waiting lists are… well. The person I talked to said that you'd probably have graduated before you got to the top of the list."

"Because they don't want someone like me," I said. The thought of heading back to Winslow had ruined whatever good feelings I might have had. And heaven forbid that Arcadia let me in. Sure, Leah and Sam had been nice enough, but they were just students. God, things would have been just better if I'd applied there for high school in the first place.

"It's not… I did try to explain," my Dad said, reaching out to give me a hug. I didn't try to get away, but I didn't hug him back. "But the waiting list is apparently really long and… it sucks, I know."

"I guess I'll just have to tough it out. Like I have for years," I said.

"No," he said. "No," he repeated, more loudly. "No, no more. You're not going to just sit there and take it. We'll make a difference. Somehow. Even if the school doesn't want to listen."

Yeah, like anything's going to make a difference, I thought to myself. To stop myself from saying that out loud, I instead looked him in the eyes and said, "Dad. Promise me that you won't do anything…" I searched for a good word, "rash." No, that wasn't the right word, but I didn't know what would be.

"Oh, don't worry," he said. "I've been thinking about this. About a lot of things and I…"

"I can't let you get in trouble because of me," I protested. I couldn't. "I can't and I won't. I can just hold on until I graduate. I'll tell the teachers if anything else happens, I promise I will! Just don't… like, go confront Emma's dad or something because," I gasped for air, "because he's a lawyer and he knows all the tricks to make anything that happens look like your fault and… and… and…" I slumped, shaking. "I can't let you do anything that would get you arrested," I whispered.

There was an awkward pause before he wrapped his arms around me and gave me a hug. "There you are, looking after your old man when you're just out of hospital." he said, trying to make it into a joke. "I'm the one who's meant to be looking after you, and I will."

He wasn't joking. I flickered to the Other Place, and he was a blazing inferno. The only thing keeping him in the vague shape of a man were the chains that coiled around him. What would happen if I loosed them? Translated out of the metaphor-logic of the Other Place, that would be getting rid of his control, setting his temper free. That would be a terrible idea to begin with, and even if it wasn't – even if I could see some obvious way to get rid of his stress or calm him down – I couldn't do it. There was no way I was going to mess with Dad's head. It was a line I shouldn't cross.

The heat of his rage couldn't actually burn me, but I still flinched away from it. Mentally retreating back to normalcy, I found him frowning at me. "Taylor," he said, "what's wrong? You didn't used to try to escape hugs."

I couldn't explain why. "I didn't use to do a lot of things," I said bitterly, and then blinked. That didn't really mean anything, as a sentence. Hmm. "I mean, I didn't… I used to do different things. Oh, forget it." I snorted. "I… I just sort of mucked up that sullen teenager comeback, didn't I?"

He gave a weak grin. "Yeah, you sort of did. Want me to help you unpack? And then we can head to the shops. We need food and you probably have stuff you need, too."

I blinked. "Yeah, thinking about it, I do need some things. More toothpaste, a new toothbrush, maybe some pens and a notebook or something. I think I should keep a new diary." I cleared my throat. "And speaking of diaries…"

…

It was dark outside. Through my curtains I could see the rain falling, lit by the orange of the sodium street lights. I glanced over the spines of the new books I'd bought, but I didn't feel like reading Hopscotch, Foucault's Pendulum, or Messenger 13. Leah had recommended them, but they didn't look quite like the kind of thing I'd normally read, and I was feeling exhausted.

It wasn't just from being out of the routine I'd built up in hospital, or from a cold, damp shopping trip. I wasn't the most sociable sort by short, and having my dad want to spend so much time with me was mentally exhausting. I needed time to recharge my batteries. I appreciated why he was treating me with kid gloves, butit was getting just a bit annoying.

I'd shown him the old diary of the things that the bullies had been doing to me. That hadn't gone well at all. I'd thought for a moment that he was about to explode. He was planning to bring that up when we met with the school to talk about me going back to school. I'd extracted a promise from him that he wouldn't do anything until then.

Telling the truth about things was really hard work, and I wasn't even sure it was the right thing to do. I'd had to beat down Madame Secret again today, just so I could show him the diary, and all it had done was make him even angrier, burn more furiously in the Other Place. I couldn't go a full day of interaction with my own father without having to chain down facets of my own personality in a creepy alternate reality. Twice. Maybe I just wasn't cut out for acting like a normal person?  
God, I was so fucked up. Why couldn't I have had some nice clean and simple Alexandria package?

Oh wait, because I got my powers when I was locked in the sort of thing that third world countries might use to torture dissidents, apparently tried to kill myself, and nearly died. It wasn't my fault my powers were like this. Emma, Sophia and Madison were the ones who put me through this. Their fault, not mine. I just had to play the hand I was dealt.

I lay back on my bed, and let the Other Place impose itself over my senses. It didn't lie to me like the normal world did. I could see the truth hidden in things when I looked into it. It was horrible, yes, but the normal world was horrible too. At least the Other Place was honest about it.

My room wasn't the worst Other Place reflection I'd seen. Not by far. It was mostly just bare concrete. There weren't any creepy scrawlings on the walls and the metal was mostly intact. Everything was damp and there were pools of dark water on the floor, though, and when I gingerly tasted the water it was salty. Yes, I suppose I had cried in here quite a bit.

Well. That was going to change.

I picked up the remote from the pool of water it lay in, and turned on my television. The cathode ray hummed like a swarm of insects in the Other Place, and I flicked through the channels to leave it on the news. That should give me some background noise and make it sound like I was watching something.

"Paranapiacaba at twelve hundred hours," said the vapid blonde newsreader with the plastic face, smiling with lips fixed into rigid fake-happy curves. "Elisenburg via Merkland and Lvivsaka Brama at thirteen thirty."

The plastic man beside her with lipstick kisses over his sallow cheeks chuckled. "Chamberí at fourteen thirty," he said. "Kymlinge and Stadion Spartak at fifteen forty five, Dachnoye at sixteen hundred hours. And now over to Sasha for the weather."

Hmm, actually, I should change to another channel. He'd probably be a bit suspicious if I just had a 24 hour news channel on.

"At least we're getting paid for this, right? Fuckers better not try to cheat us out of this," said a gaunt corpse in a fancy long dress and wig.

"I used to be on Broadway," the man with fly's eyes standing beside her said morosely. "Shakespeare, Stoppard, proper period pierces. Now look at me. Dressing up in a powdered wig and prancing around to this script written by a bloody hack who thought it would be great to put parahumans in a historical film. Fuck this. So much for artistic integrity. What's next, I'm going to end up as an evil wizard in some film for little kids? I'm going to have words with my agent."

I tilted my head. Well. That was something. I was going to have to go work my way through some films and see if anything else was like this.

But I was getting distracted.

It was time for something I'd been thinking about, ever since I'd found that I could send my constructs to fetch me things. I couldn't test it much in the hospital for fear of being caught, but even there I'd managed to work out that I could recover things from outside my visual range, even on the other side of the building. What I was about to try would be a much more challenging test for my powers.

Carefully, I fetched one of the photo albums from my book shelf, and set it down on my bed. Crossing my legs, I flicked though it. I sighed. I was smiling a lot more in the photos. And didn't have pink self-inflicted scars on my face. I found what I was looking for. The photo was slightly faded, despite being kept in this binder.

"Things could have been better," I told the picture of my mother and a twelve year old me, beaming out through time. "Why did you…" My voice cracked as the things I'd seen in the locker forced themselves back into my consciousness. Had that really been real, or had it just been me, imagining how it might have happened? I'd asked myself that a few times when I was in the psychiatric hospital, and hadn't been able to come to an answer.

I had more reason than most to think it might have been real – after all, my power gave me psychometry. I _could_ see the past, in one sense. On the other hand, what I'd seen had been clear, free of symbolism and twisted imagery. It was just the sort of delusion a near-death experience might provoke, wasn't it?

Did I want to know?

I'd leave that thought for another day.

I'd been thinking about how my power worked. Clearly my constructs could find things which I could see, but there was no way they'd be able to find my mother's flute unless they went and searched everywhere. That just wasn't plausible. I couldn't sustain them long enough to have a chance to find it unless I knew where to send them.

But making constructs wasn't exactly my main power, was it? That was just a thing I did in the Other Place, and that was the real trick I had up my sleeve. And in the Other Place, things left a mark, an emotional residue, that lingered long after the actual events. I could see where someone had tried to kill themselves, sense the despair of the shanty town, and feel the depression coming off some of the other patients.

Maybe a construct could track the trail between the flute and me, to find it. After all, it had mattered a lot to me. I'd already found I could track the books I'd leant Leah, back when I was in the hospital, and they hadn't been anywhere near as important.

I smiled softly to myself. Perhaps leaving some books with her had been an act of accidental brilliance. I could track them back to her, and so check up on her and Sam.

Surely a book would have a lot less of a 'trail' than my mother's flute?

I got up, and sat myself down at my desk. I was going to do this properly. I was going to plan every step out, making sure that I didn't have to make things up as I went. I wouldn't be much good if I couldn't do things that I planned out properly. Opening up one of my new notepads, I dug out a pencil and idly started chewing on the eraser at the end.

_I want to find the flute.  
\- Searching, use Sniffer for it._

I paused and tilted my head, thinking hard.

_Add camera to her, so I can see what she finds. Might need to take a long time, several hours, so reinforce her. Lots of details.  
\- Big eyes + nose + hands  
\- Memories of the flute. Integrate them into her. If I feed her my flute memories, she'll know what to look for.  
\- Bigger head? To hold memories?  
\- Does clothing matter? Maybe – extra detail. Makes it harder, but more detail = lasts longer._

I kept on thinking, and started to sketch out a labelled stickwoman in the margin. Big eyes, big hands, a long tongue drooping out of her mouth. Cameras on her shoulders. Eventually, I felt I was ready. Closing my eyes, I got to work.

It was hard. Not in the sense that chaining Madame Secret was hard – that was a physically exhausting struggle. This was hard in the sense that trying to memorise a long string of numbers was hard. I kept on forgetting things, losing track of things I'd already added, and my mind wandered. I was thinking about how I'd probably eaten too much when I was meant to be trying to make a hunting-construct to find my mother's flute.

Okay, I'll admit it, I also had to scrap my work a few times when I got distracted by imagining about whether I could make something which could hunt down the bullies and make them suffer. The kind of changes that were made to my design by that train of thought suggested that I could, but I wasn't going to think about that. I wasn't a villain, and sending invisible monsters made of barbed wire and thorns to hunt down bullies was a definitely villainous thing to do. They were the bad guys, not me.

After starting over for the sixth or seventh time, I finally managed to hold the image in my mind, complete. I exhaled, and opened my eyes. A lanky giant with spidery limbs stared down at me with oversized camera lenses instead of eyes. She was bent in half just to fit in my room, and her knees brushed against the roof. Her head was too big for her body, easily the size of my torso. I tried not to flinch, but I couldn't help it. I hadn't quite expected to make Sniffer this large. I checked the chains were secure around her wrists and legs, and added an extra layer for good measure.

The construct snuffled at me, opening its mouth and letting its twisting tongue fall out, tasting the air.

I turned around, and picked up the photograph. "Here," I told the construct quietly. "See this flute. Find it! Do it!"

Sniffer snuffled once, and bounded off through the window, which rippled like a pond which just had a stone thrown into it. I really hoped I hadn't let loose a monster.

Closing my eyes, I made the same set of flying barbed wire baby dolls and flat screen TV I'd made to spy on dad and the doctors. It was much easier than Sniffer – was it because they were less complicated, or because I'd made them before? Either way, it seemed practice made perfect. The screen crackled with static, white and black dancing across the screen in chaotic patterns, before cohering into an image.

That was fast.

I stared at the screen in the Other Place. I could see swirling dark water, filled with floating bits of something which was maybe mud and maybe sand. And yes, half-buried in it next to a discarded shopping cart and an empty beer can was my mother's flute.

I pursed my lips. Those _bitches_. They'd stolen it, and it hadn't even mattered to them. They hadn't kept it under one of their beds, or hidden it in some secret place, or even sold it to a pawn shop. They'd just tossed it into a pond, or maybe the harbour, and forgotten it even existed. They'd got nothing out of it. They'd done it just to hurt me.

I knew where it was. I could see it. It was on the other side of the screen, almost close enough to touch.

Next step.

"Go!" I told one of the barbed-wire babies. "Bring it to me."

The construct didn't do what I expected. Rather than disappear as Sniffer had, it flicker-teleported over to the screen, and slit it open with a hand, like a knife through a plastic bag. The screen flopped open, but remained showing the image.

No. It wasn't an image.

The doll-face of the barbed wire babies stared expectantly at me.

"You want me to…? I can…"

They stared at me mutely.

I took a deep breath, and stood. I couldn't let myself wonder what I was doing. In one movement, I thrust my hand through the split open screen, into icy water, and felt my fingers close around the cold metal of the flute. I yanked my hand out as soon as I could, and not too soon, because I was barely free when the screen fuzzed back into static. I felt my legs sag. Numbly I staggered back to my bed, the patinaed flute dripping water, and I sat down heavily.

This was my mother's flute. I'd found it using my powers. I'd made Sniffer and she'd made it, and then once I'd found it, the barbed wire baby had turned the screen into a hole in the world.

Except it hadn't been quite a hole in the world, had it? The water hadn't come through. I massaged my hand, the one which had been through the hole in the world, noticing with some surprise that my fingers had started bleeding again.

It really, really stung. The harbour, then - it had to be salt water to hurt that much. I'd need to go clean it off. But first, I switched back to the real world, and waved my hand through the spot where my television-portal had been. Nothing. My hand just waved through normal air. It didn't pass through an invisible portal, or smack a hidden barbed-wire cherub.

So, that hole in the world was a portal through the Other Place. It didn't exist in reality. And I'd made it. I'd already seen that there were doors in the hospital which hadn't lined up properly with the real ones, but I'd never worked up the nerve to walk through one.

I was beginning to realise that the Other Place was more than just some way for me to parse the information my power was giving me. It wasn't just a creepy, informative filter I was putting over the normal world. I suspected it existed outside of my head. It was a place where space and distance – hell, maybe time and God knew what else – didn't quite work properly.

This success had taught me something else too. Most of my powers weren't exactly world-shaking, sure, but I was _really_ flexible. Hah. Out of all the powers I'd read about, maybe I was most like a Tinker. I didn't have real powers in my own right, but I could _make_ things that did.

I wouldn't be punching out an Endbringer any time soon, but I had my mother's flute back. I gripped it tightly as I walked to the bathroom. I'd _beaten_them at something. I'd do so again.

That night I dreamed I was in the locker once more. My life tried to escape me, and so did my spirit, blackness oozing out from my open wounds along with the blood. I struggled, fought, tried to stop it from escaping me. But it was getting harder and harder and I was getting so tired. The rot was everywhere and it was creeping and squirming over my skin. I was dying. Everything was going cold.

I woke, gasping for air. The clock on my bedside table flashed 03:58.

I didn't get back to sleep.


	15. Namakarana 2-04

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 2.04**

The morning took too long to arrive. The nightmare of the locker had cut through the sleeping pills, and I couldn't have any more. I just lay there sleepless, listening to the sound of the cars outside. The rain slowed and stopped just before dawn. I felt shattered. Therefore, the only responsible thing to do today was catch up on my rest, with a nice lazy morning as an incidental bonus. Unfortunately, dad knocked on my door around 11am.

"Morning," he said, though I could tell his cheerfulness was a front. "Um… can you please get up and get dressed quickly, Taylor?" he asked me.

I stared at him blearily, rubbing my eyes on my sleeve. "Gneargh?" I managed. Or maybe some other mess of syllables which might be made by someone running on almost no sleep.

"Something's come up at work," he said. "I'm meant to be off today, but… look, it's serious. And not in a good way."

"You could leave me at home?" I tried, trying to suppress an only slightly exaggerated yawn.

"I'm not really… uh, comfortable with that," he said, obviously picking his words with care. "You- you can take books, right? And just stay in the waiting room. But I want to be around you and… look, I just don't want to leave you alone, okay?"

I raised a hand in defeat. "Give me fifteen minutes to get up and dressed and stuff," I said, the yawn I'd been trying to suppress escaping. I tried honesty. "I didn't sleep well. Bad dreams."

My dad looked sympathetic. "Do you want to talk about it?" he tried.

"Not really," I said. "I… I just dreamed about the locker. And then I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep." I shook my head. "What am I meant to do? I… I was only in there for like an hour or two. I know that. I've spent longer dreaming of it than…" I bit down on my lip, trying not to shake. "It'll go away some time, right?" I asked. I coughed. "Now, if you'll excuse me…"

I stumbled through to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. In the Other Place, the floor was littered with broken tiles, and the light above the sink cast a particularly harsh and unforgiving white glare, which made my face look wan and sickly in the broken mirror.

This wasn't what I'd wanted to happen on my first night home. Fuck. I felt like shit and… God, what was even happening with Dad? He had his really-serious face on. I remembered he'd been talking about the riots and things when I'd been in the hospital, but I thought they'd died down. Had they flared up again?

I couldn't function like this. If something big was happening, I wanted to be awake to face it, not running off fumes and a few hours of staring at the ceiling… I sighed. Time to fix it.

My tiredness was an ugly little baby-thing with midnight blue skin and a pale, horse-like mask. It constantly screamed out a lullaby that made my eyes droop despite its dissonant voice. I envisioned it nailed to the wall with iron nails the length of my forearm, heard its song choked off, and felt immediately much more awake. Why hadn't I thought of doing this earlier? This way I could avoid the nightmares.

Though it might be kind of unhealthy. I'd need to see if I was just making myself ignore my fatigue, or I was actually no longer tired. I'd feel like such a fool if I dropped dead from sleep deprivation because it turned out that I was still physically paying for it.

I tapped the sink. If I only slept every other day, maybe I could be too tired to dream when I actually rested. That'd be good. And I'd have more time to do stuff. Well, I'd see. I wasn't sure yet that suppressing my tiredness like this was exactly safe. Drying my face, I left Cry Baby nailed to the wall, and went to get dressed.

It had stopped raining, and the clouds had cleared up during the night. Unfortunately, just meant that it had become bitterly cold, and there was ice on the sidewalks. The main thoroughfares had been salted and gritted, but I saw two crashed cars on the way to Dad's work. Someone had died in one of them. I shivered. I didn't want to know that. It made me think of Mum. I tried to put it out of my mind as Dad parked in the car park for the Dockworker's Union.

The union office was surrounded on all sides by the decaying industrial infrastructure of Brockton Bay. The streets had been built wide, to allow for fleets of trucks that had long stopped coming. Old cranes rose into the skyline like predatory insects. In the Other Place, they wept rust. Every pool of water I saw shimmered with iridescent layers of oil, and the surfaces were blackened and grimy. At least the blood rain was gone. It hadn't left so much as a stain, as though it had never happened.

Of course, according to everyone else, it hadn't.

There was someone waiting for my dad in the foyer. They were about the same height, but while Dad was a beanpole like me, the other guy was built like a brick wall. He had deep bags under his eyes, and he looked exhausted. "Sorry 'bout calling you in, Danny," he said by way of apology.

Dad sighed. "I can't say I'm happy, Cal, but from what you said on the phone…" he trailed off and shook his head, before glancing at me. "Taylor, just wait here," he said. He dug around in his pocket for change. "Get yourself something to eat from the vending machines," he added. "I'll try to get this done as soon as possible, but… you have a book in your bag, right?"

I nodded, pursing my lips slightly. Something was going on and I didn't know what. This had to be important if he was being called in like this, and everyone was being evasive in front of me. It was just a moment's thought to shift to the Other Place, before I paused. Was it really right to just casually spy on my dad?

No, it wasn't, I decided. I would show restraint, like I had before. Dad was off limits. I wouldn't abuse my powers like that. Putting my hands in my pockets, I slouched off to stare at the vending machine. Was I feeling in a chocolate mood? Urgh. I really didn't want to start the day with that for breakfast. And I wanted a proper lunch too. I was going to be healthier, I'd promised myself. Hmm. I really should start my new exercise regime.

I heard a muffled thump, and frowned, looking around. Now that I was listening for them, I could hear raised voices, just at the edge of audibility, from the room Dad and the other guy had gone into. I managed to keep a hold on my curiosity until the second thump. What on Earth was going on in there? I focussed, breathed out two twin butterfly-winged dolls, and sent one in to listen, while its twin repeated everything it heard.

"You don't think I don't fucking know that?" my dad snapped, his voice coming from the mouth of the chipped china doll. "But there's never any proof!"

I gasped, and then looked around nervously to see if anyone was paying attention to me. "That's really expensive," I said. That probably was one of the least convincing attempts to cover up surprise ever, but at least I'd made the effort. But what? What was going on here?

"Who needs proof? Remember? Tim now, Aaron Crikton when he tried to unionise Walmart, Yusuf from the Teamsters! Even when they find someone, it's always some petty ganger!"

"There's no proof, Cal," my dad grated. He sounded furious, but he seemed to have it – barely – under control. "Whoever's doing this, they win if we lash out."

"Whatever happened to the Dan me and Tim used to know in the old days!" Cal retorted. "He might die, and they killed his son! They win if we sit back and take it!"

"I know!" There was a pause, and I heard him panting. "I know," Dad said more quietly. "Godfuckingdammit. We can't win either way. Fuck it."

"I know, right?" Cal had also gone quiet. "Anyway."

"Yeah. The insurance stuff. I'll need to hold down the fort today. I'll go talk to his wife tomorrow."

"Yeah. There are other people we'll need to talk to, too. Without Tim around, that changes things."

"I don't want to even think about that. We can see where that goes at the next meeting," my dad said, so softly I could barely hear him. "Never mind. It's for later." He coughed, and took a deep breath. "Do I look calmed down?" he asked.

"Give it a few moments," the other man said. "Heh. Taylor's shot up like a weed, she has. I can remember when she was just yay-high. Takes after you there. Looks a lot like you, too." He paused. "How's she doing?" he asked, sounding awkward.

I could hear the shrug from my dad. "Better," he said tersely. "The doctors say so, anyway. Me… I don't even know. I thought I knew her and then it turns out all this stuff was happening with her and…" he sighed. "We're just taking it day by day. I don't even know what to say, half the time. But enough about that." I heard a door click. "Let's just get this over and done with."

I called the dolls back to me, and reinhaled them as my dad approached, before looking him up and down in the Other Place. His fire was almost out of control, straining and licking the ceiling. I winced, and took a deep breath. I wanted to help him – but it just didn't feel right to try to chain his anger. It felt… icky. Wrong.

"What's going on?" I asked my dad. He'd expect me to ask, and I wanted to see what he'd tell me.

"Tim… someone I've known for a long time, he's our treasurer, he's been shot. The police say it looks like it was a white nationalist gang," he said. "I'm sorry, Taylor, but I'm going to have to help deal with the insurance. And we'll have to go visit him in hospital, maybe today, probably tomorrow." His lips were thin. "You should remember Tim. Short, dark skin, glasses?"

It did ring a distant bell. I vaguely remembered people from Dad's work I'd seen over the years. "The one with the funny tattoo on his arm?" I hazarded.

Dad winced. "Yes," he said. "I should have guessed you'd remember that." He took a deep breath. "Anyway. Taylor, this is going to take a while. I'll give you some money. There's a diner just up the road, closer to the docks. Go get lunch. Stay close."

"And if I go somewhere else or something, I have my phone on me," I said quickly. I hadn't much liked the look of the place he suggested. I'd seen it on the drive in. It had been decidedly greasy spoonish. I was going to be eating more healthily than I had in the hospital. And if it took a long time, I could maybe go for a jog. Maybe not. The air was cold enough that my lungs would probably start hurting if I jogged. But I could give it a go, and if it didn't work out, I could at least walk.

He pursed his lips. "I'd prefer if I knew where you were," he said. "I'd wanted to spend today at home with you. A nice quiet day."

"I won't go too far," I said quickly. "If I even go. It depends if they do anything that I want, right?"

"Just… be safe," he said, wearily.

"I will," I promised him.

My breath steamed in front of me when I stepped out of the entrance. I rubbed my gloved hands together, and stuck them in the pockets of my coat. Wherever I went, I wanted something hot to drink. In a place with heating.

In the end, I did just go to the place he pointed out. Finding a seat, I ordered a coffee, and got started on Foucault's Pendulum. Reading slightly old books was always odd. Not really old books, but books which were just about old enough for the world to be very different, but still familiar. It was sort of like reading science fiction. I mean, I did intellectually understand that there had been such a thing as a world without capes and without the Endbringers, but reading about it always seemed strange.

And boy, was this book stranger than most. The foreword had mentioned that it was a translation from the Italian. Maybe I would have understood it better if I was Italian and got all the references. Probably not. The characters made all these complicated references to various conspiracy theories and – huh, I'd never even thought that a vanity publisher would work like that. It really seemed like things like that should be illegal. Like, it was basically fraud. Oh, and it was all flashbacks and… was it a parody of conspiracy stories? It was a bit – was literary the right word? Literary? Fancy? Not-written-to-be-funny? – to be a parody.

Leah was a very strange girl to read books like this for fun, I had to conclude. Mind you, I didn't put it down, so I was clearly a bit strange as well.

I snorted to myself. Yeah, just a bit. I only saw twisted monsters in a horrible hell-world when I used my weird parahuman talent. Barely worth mentioning.

Still, to spend my first full day out of a mental hospital sitting in a diner reading a book was nice. I didn't even see the Other Place once, because I was hungry and didn't want to see anything that would put me off my food. The last thing I wanted was to see that the waitress serving me had a fly's head or something. That would just lead to me thinking about flies and not wanting to eat anything she touched and probably feeling ill from the things I'd already had and then working myself into a worry about whether I was feeling ill from worry or because the food had been unsafe to eat in some way and… well, enough about that. No, I was just going to drink my coffee, eat and read.

And maybe spy on my dad. Just a little bit. But everything I heard from him was boring talk about insurance and I just stopped listening when he started talking to someone on the phone about coverage. I didn't like the implications that I'd heard from that first bit of conversation, though. They worried me. If people from unions were being killed… well, surely Dad'd have said something if he was in trouble, right? Wouldn't he?

I got back to my book.

An electric hum broke my concentration. I sighed, and looked up as the lights flickered and dimmed. It was 13:39 according to the clock on the wall, and still no call from Dad. And now this.

Another brownout. They were just a background feature of life in Brockton Bay. An annoying one. From what Dad had told me, the old power station down the coast at Red Beach hadn't been up to standards when it was built in the 70s, and the power company found it cheaper to pay the fines for failing to live up to regulations than actually do the full infrastructure rework that the city needed. There had been a Tinkertech powerplant built back in the early 90s to replace it, but that'd been wrecked by supervillains who'd stolen whatever thingie made it work.

I heard grumbling all around me. The television was fuzzing in and out, waves of static washing over the surface. I quickly glanced into the Other Place, but there was nothing more strange going on in the lipstick-scrawling-covered screen than usual. Oh, and the waitress was just a greyed, exhausted-looking walking corpse with threadbare clothes, which left me feeling rather better about the meal I'd just eaten. That just meant she was tired and overworked and didn't care, and probably had money problems. Which, you know, I'd kind of guessed from looking at her.

Thanks, power. Really perceptive there.

Well, I wasn't going to be getting another coffee while the power was playing up. I'd been silly enough to get a seat away from the window, too, so it'd be hard to keep on reading while the lights were flickering.

Oh, sure, I'd told my dad I'd stay here, but I had a phone now if he wanted to find me. And I had promised myself I'd get fitter. So I'd just go for a jog around the block while I waited for the power to come back on. I wouldn't go near any dangerous areas or anything like that. This wasn't the really bad area of the Docks, and I'd just do this until I could get back to reading. I put my book back in my bag, and paid my bill. The girl at the counter apologised for the power cut with a roll of her eyes, and I shrugged.

I bought a candy bar to go, and left, heading deeper into the Docks.


	16. Namakarana 2-05

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 2.05**

It was warming up a little, but I still stuffed my hands in my pockets as soon as I got outside. A bit of me wanted to go back into the warm, but I didn't listen to it. Even if I could feel the cold biting at the sensitive flesh of my hands even through the gloves. I needed warmer gloves to wear over the top of the protective latex. The tips of my fingers, where my nails were regrowing, ached.

No, of course I didn't go and pin to a wall my desire to go inside. That would be silly. Hmm. It would have probably have looked like me swaddled in a pile of blankets and thick clothes, with a pair of glowing eyes inside the shadows of its hood. Something to remember, I supposed.

I set off at a brisk walk. The ice from the morning was melting, but it was still slick and I really didn't want to end up on my ass. I'd just walk around the block a few times, I decided, and get the lay of the land before I went off any further. I'd been trapped in a psychiatric hospital for too long and a normal hospital even before that. I needed some fresh air, but maybe I'd go poke my head back into the union offices and see if Dad was done after my walk.

I saw a few gangers along the way, on the other side of the street. It was easy to tell. I didn't know how it was in other cities, but in Brockton Bay criminals of all kinds wore masks. If Hollywood wasn't lying to me, they did it elsewhere, too. I bet the 1980s PR people who went and got the whole parahuman 'caped crusader' thing going when they were busy showing off the 'Supermen' to the Russians didn't think that would happen. First the government parahumans dressed up as superheroes for PR, then the vigilantes and terrorists copied them, then criminals with powers started being 'supervillains' to try to 'legitimise' their actions. It was disgusting. Why didn't the government just stop them when they'd started? In the end, it had wound up that people holding up the local 7-11 threw on a Halloween mask over their balaclava.

Or, in the case of the people over the street, they all wore white masks and cheap suits. I thought that meant they were in the White Lion Association, but I wasn't sure. It made sense they were, though. I mean, white masks, White Lion. I thought they were based further south, though – in and around Old Chinatown. Well, it wasn't like I had any great insight into the criminal underworld. Either way, I stayed clear of them.

For all my talk of fresh air, the air wasn't too clean. I could smell cars, smoke, and just a hint of sewer over the top of the ever-present sea salt tang. I paused at the lights, watching the cars pass. I almost choked on a cloud of fumes leaking from some oil-dripping old clanker, but managed to settle for a coughing fit. That was one thing I definitely hadn't missed.

There was a discarded newspaper in the gutter, its pages flapping in the wind. I stooped and picked it up. It was soggy and the bottom half of the front page was ruined, but the headline of-  
LEVIATHAN ATTACKS DUBAI  
-was all too clear. I guess it had come in too late yesterday to make the morning paper, so it was headlines today. The black-and-white picture of a ruined city was bleeding ink onto my gloves. I looked around and found a trash can to dump it, wiped my hands against the pavement, and headed on, heading towards the ocean at the junction.

I could hear music from up ahead – organ music, I realised. It was coming from an old redbrick factory which had a neon cross on top of the chimney. It had been whitewashed – probably when it had been converted to being a church – but the mix of industrial grime and ocean salt so distinct to the docks had worked its way into the crevices. The paint higher up the façade was cracked, though it had been touched up close to the ground. There was a street preacher standing outside with a placard, and the congregation heading into the church tried their best to ignore him. He didn't take too well to that.

"God is dead!" called out the street preacher. His eyes were wild and his greying beard was wispy. His teeth were rotten – he looked like a meth addict. "He died alone, because we did not love him! The Soviets with their blasphemies and their lack of faith tried to kill him, unleashing the Legion upon him. With their wicked science and sinful amorality, they tried to bind Satan himself at a place called Tunguska! They failed, and were cursed! But seeing the sins of his creation, who spurned his love and the sacrifice of his Only Son, the Lord God let himself fall into the dark waters, and is no more!"

THE END IS NIGH!  
HEB 12:22-24  
WILL NEVER COME TO BE!

read his sign.

"The Book of Revelations is invalidated by the sins of man!" he called out. "There will be no Rapture! The Endbringers are the false gods, the demons of the Egyptians and the Babylonians and other wicked peoples. The burning Lion, the shifty Leopard, and the lying she-Wolf! They are lesser than the Lord and if we had not sinned, he would have kept them chained as before, but now he is dead they have returned to seek their revenge! They have burned Heaven and now turn their eyes on the world!"

I crossed the street to get away from his mad-eyed, spittle-spraying rant. Just talking about those _things _was morbid as hell. The people heading into the church weren't so lucky, and as each passed he would turn to scream at them. I adjusted my glasses, and noticed that there was someone at one of the windows in the church, staring out at him and talking on the phone. Calling the police, perhaps.

I flickered my vision to the Other Place, and peered over the top of my glasses. The church was now a gothic monstrosity, leering gargoyles glowering down at the world from atop rusty iron crosses. It looked like it belonged in some ancient city somewhere in Europe. There was a smog of – I sniffed – fear, worry, concern, something I couldn't quite pin down about it, and it clung to the people heading in.

But were they worried because they were going to church, or were they going to church because they were worried? I wasn't sure. We used to go every week when Mum was still alive, but when she died Dad basically fell apart, and we just… drifted away. I sighed. Some certainty would be nice in my life. Maybe I should head in, see why all those people were gathering. But no, I'd have to turn my phone off and that would make Dad worried if he tried to call me. He didn't need that.

And I'd also have to walk past the crazy preacher. When I saw him in the Other Place, I really, _really _didn't want to get anywhere close to him. His flesh pulsed and flowed, never staying constant. Mouths budded from it, shouting curses and nonsense words – do you know the word for that is 'glossolalia'? That was something I'd found out from a book I'd borrowed from Leah. Looking at him, I knew what his problem was. It was a worse version of what Emily at the hospital had.

"She told me!" he ranted and raved, over the babbling of the mouths on his body, "that ninety nine knights of the air ride super high-tech jet fighters! But does the army kill the Endbringers? No! People, innocents, loved ones die, their lives thrown away because we can't kill those wicked gods! Only faith can stop them!"

Of course, Emily was on medication, and it wasn't too easy to tell she had problems in normal conversation. If she was prone to strange leaps of logic and saying things without thinking, maybe that was just how she was normally. This guy, though – I sighed, and thrust my hands into my pockets. He wasn't right in the head. He looked like he'd been taking drugs from those meth-addict teeth, but his problems went deeper than that. What had gone wrong for him, I wondered. The way he talked suggested he had some kind of education, but who knew?

I walked on by, and hated myself a little bit for it. I could see there was something wrong with him, but I did nothing. Could I do something? Maybe. I didn't know everything my powers could do. But even if I could fix him, by – I don't know – pulling out a construct that represented his addiction, what then? It'd get free in a few hours, when the construct collapsed.

And what if I did it wrong? What would happen then? I could barely manage to chain Madame Secret, and she was part of me. The idea of mucking up with a crazy street guy's meth addiction made me feel like I was holding broken glass in my bare hands. What if it got into _me?_

No, I wasn't good enough to do anything. But that didn't mean I liked knowing that he was ill, and doing nothing about it. I wished I'd never looked at him in the Other Place.

I'd gone a bit off track, and should probably head back to the diner or the union offices. Well, I wasn't going to head back the same way. I didn't want to have to walk by the crazy street preacher again. I doubted the cops would pick him up. Sure, they'd grab him if he was doing it over in Nobility Hill, but this was the docks. Even if they did take him in, there'd probably be complaining letters in the paper about how they should have been spending their time combating gang violence.

… honestly, those letters would be right.

I didn't leave the Other Place. Hands in my pockets, I strode down filthy streets, beneath the shadow of rusty insect-cranes, and past monsters of all descriptions. At first I tried to guess what that meant about each person I saw, but quickly I stopped wondering. It was just getting me down. That, and the irregular stains of red-black death-marks on the sidewalks and the road.

God. Why did I have this power? It gave me the ability to see how rotten the world was, how everything was rusty and filthy and horrible. And yet I kept on using it. Maybe it was because I already knew how bad the world was, how people could be monsters beneath a pretty surface. Why couldn't I have had something which let me heal people? Something which would let me make the things _better_, not just see how broken they were?

I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and dug in my pockets, fishing out the candy bar I'd got from the diner. I stared numbly at the packet, and the twisted text which now declared 'GlUttONy FeELs GoOd', and giggled weakly. Or maybe I was just feeling mopey because it was the first day I'd spent out of a psychiatric hospital, I spent all my time staring into a twisted hell-dimension, my dad was busy dealing with one of his friends being shot, and top of everything else, it was that time of the month. Maybe I had a good reason to be feeling a bit blue.

I bit into the candy and felt a bit better. Gluttony did feel good. God, I hate you, Other Place, for being so cynical and yet accurate. And that was more chocolate, which meant I really should try to jog to burn off some of the calories from this and… and my attempts at a jog slowed and then stopped after only a hundred yards.

One building drew my eye. An old, heavy squat structure probably dating back to the early 1900s, longer than it was wide, with small high-set windows completely opaque from decades of grime. It was set back from the road, in front of a mostly empty parking lot behind a well-maintained chain fence. There were spikes on top of the fence and regular 'Trespassers will be prosecuted' and 'Beware of the Dog' signs.

The dog was being walked around the parking lot by a security guard in a day-glo jacket. It was not a friendly dog. And the security guard wasn't much of a looker, either.

Of course, that was what it looked like in the real world, when I checked it. That wasn't what had caught my attention.

In the Other Place, it was a looming structure of human misery. The walls were fleshy, and almost seemed to throb. No, I corrected myself, they were visibly pulsing. The ivy growing up one side of the building appeared to be veins. Compared to the greyness and the decay and passive despair of the rest of the area around it, it was active in its dreadfulness.

It looked as bad as that shanty town I'd seen the day before. Maybe worse. I hadn't seen the shanty town up close. What was that building anyway? A warehouse? A leftover dockside factory built by some old industrialist so he could get things straight to the ships with as little delay as possible? Maybe it was now some slum housing – though it looked kind of dead for a place people lived.

There was a dark black-red stain in the middle of the parking lot, just short of one of the slightly dirty white vans. I squinted. The stain looked like it was smoking slightly, though it was hard to tell in the misery-fog.

I knew what that meant. Someone had died there. And my eyes drifted over to the warehouse door. More stains. The wind shifted and the misery-sick-hate-depression stench blew over towards me. I gagged, and tasted bile.

There was something horribly, horribly wrong about that place. I had to do _something_. I didn't know what, but I couldn't just leave this alone. Unless… well, maybe it was an old stain in the Other Place? A forgotten tragedy, nothing to do with the building's current use?

No, I told myself. I didn't know how I knew, but the reek was far too _fresh _for it to be anything other than recent. I nervously twisted my hands together, and winced at the pain from my fingers. What to do, what to do? I couldn't just call the police right now. Even if I had a phone box… oh wait, I had a mobile now… but what proof did I have? Nothing that wouldn't have them either thinking I was crazy, or a parahuman. Hell, I didn't even know what was going on in there for sure. Maybe it was… like, a place where they cut up people and turned them into dog food.

Nah. There was no way that could be true. That's the kind of thing which only happened in trashy horror movies, right?

I wished I could believe that. When the wind in Other Place blew the smell of that building at me, I could have accepted almost anything about it.

Perching on a bollard on the other side of the street, I exhaled two of the dolls that I'd used to spy on Dad earlier today. "Go, listen," I told one of them. "Find out what's inside."

The one which stayed with me opened its mouth. There was a rhythmic noise coming from inside the building. It was some kind of machinery – no, scratch that, quite a lot of machines all making the same noise. Some kind of motor, I thought. It was muffled, though. I tried to make it go inside, but it seemed to bounce off the walls. That was what happened when I tried to send one of my constructs outside sensory range without something to anchor it to, or something it was tracking.

I frowned, and brought out the barbed wire angel with a camera for a face. I sent it to follow the security guard around. If he went inside, I could get a look. But I'd need to find a better place. I wanted to see inside with my own eyes. I paced around the building, keeping my eyes open. There were a few other buildings, old warehouses and the like, on the same block. None of them looked like that in the Other Place. They were just bleak, decaying concrete and brick structures. Whatever was wrong, it was something to do with that building.

One of the warehouses had an old fire escape running up the outside, up to the roof. I looked around. No one was watching me. And checking in the real world, the fire escape looked in good condition. I deliberated for a moment, and then started to climb the stairs.

My heart was pounding. In the cold air, each breath seemed to ache. I could feel my nerves on fire with adrenaline. I was technically trespassing here. I was already rehearsing my story in my head, 'Oh no, I just wanted to see what everything looked like from up here'. It wasn't even technically a lie. I was trying to get a better view of the place. At least I was giving my thighs a workout.

I clearly wasn't the first person to climb this fire escape. There were old discarded beer bottles around a soot-blackened metal barrel, as well as some graffiti tags and – my nose wrinkled – what looked like enough cigarette butts to give you lung cancer all in one go. Charming. The graffiti wasn't all in English. Chinese or Japanese, I wasn't really able to tell the difference. It was all French to me… or rather, Chinese or Japanese, which was the problem.

I squinted as I tried to see in through the windows of the building in the normal world. Damn it, I had the feeling that my eyesight might be getting slightly worse. I might need new glasses. I hadn't noticed it until I contrasted it to my perfect vision in the Other Place – which was really strange when I thought about it. Because I was short sighted, and that meant my eyes focussed the light wrong, and that meant that, somehow, in the Other Place my eyes were working properly. Did that mean I wasn't using light to see or… what?

But that was just my mind trying to distract itself. The high up windows had been boarded up from the inside. I couldn't see in from up here. And the gap between this roof and the other building was far, far too far for me to jump. I wasn't stupid enough to even think about it – not seriously, at least. I sighed. I should probably stop wishing that I was Alexandria.

Funny, really. Before I got my powers, I could have ended up with any set of powers possible. Well, theoretically. But the point was, I _could _have been the next Alexandria, even if it was really unlikely. Though not _totally _impossible, right – after all, they were already calling Glory Girl the next Alexandria, and she lived in Brockton Bay.

Now? No way. I had my powers. That die had been cast, and come up horrible.

However, what I could see from up here was a bit where the fence around the warehouse wasn't quite flush against the wall. I thought I might be able to squeeze in. I wouldn't have a chance if I hadn't been a beanpole, but I thought I might fit. So it was a calf-aching climb down the fire escape again, and then I had to hold my breath and squeeze through the gap, nearly losing the buttons on my coat along the way. I was now up against the side of the suspicious building. I hoped the guard didn't patrol here, but at least I was out of the open. I ducked up to a pair of dumpsters, and thought to look inside.

I found lots of fabric. It looked like offcuttings from… from something. I wasn't sure. They came in lots of colours, though. Why would they have a dumpster full of fabric offcuttings in a place so horrible? I wasn't just imagining it, was I?

I checked the Other Place and immediately regretted it. This close to the flesh-building, the smell was indescribable. I meant that literally, too, because it had things in it like grief and exhaustion which never really came in smell form. They just got into my brain through my nostrils.

Right. I put my palms flat against the wall, and concentrated. Sniffer, long limbs, big camera eyes, big nose. I took a deep breath in reality, and released it in the Other Place. I was going to force Sniffer through this wall, whether she liked it or not. I was going to see what was on the other side. I was going to see everything there.

Things went wrong almost immediately. She didn't form. Not like I wanted to. Crimson butterflies forced their way out of my mouth, briefly coalescing into a half-shape of pale flesh before disintegrating again and again. I focused, and pushed harder. There was a sudden sense of pressure which gave way, and my vision turned black.

And I saw… everything.

_the walls, padding fastened to the inside to mute the noise  
narrow, cramped  
no colour, no light, only a sense of shape like the knowledge of where my hand was when it was behind my back, but covering everything in the area  
those two, chained by love  
those two, chained together by hate  
everyone is connected  
all these people  
all these sewing machines  
men walking up and down  
batons and guns  
old violence in the floor  
people died here  
he hates her  
misery  
hopelessness  
tiredness  
contempt  
apathy_

I collapsed to my knees, panting. I had a splitting migraine, and I could taste copper. My throat was burning, like I'd just breathed in smoke from a bonfire. I'd bitten my lower lip, I realised. Shit.

What… what had just happened? I'd just been trying to see what was going inside and then my senses had gone strange. Had I just seen through Sniffer's eyes? Was that how she-it saw the world? Well, 'saw'. It wasn't sight. I couldn't tell you what colour any of the clothes the people had been working on had been – yes, they had been clothes – but I could tell you their shape. I could tell you how everything had been connected together, tied together by iron chains – the thicker the closer – and everyone in there was trapped by it. And the faint machine noise I'd heard had been sewing machines.

Oh. I knew what this was. You heard about this sometimes; illegal sweatshops. In the old days, they used to make clothes overseas where you didn't have to pay people as much. Nowadays, they bought the people to the US, from war torn or Endbringer-wrecked places.

Coughing, spluttering, I pulled myself to my feet. These weren't nice people. This wasn't a nice place. And they were totally fine with keeping people in conditions which… which make the Other Place like _this_ and…

"What's this noise?"

Shit. Shit shit shit. There was the security guard with his dog at the end of the alley. Oh fuck, I'd been coughing and making noise and of course he'd come to see what was going on. No. No no no.

"You!"

Shit. He'd seen me.

"Hey!" he called at me, and I jumped back. "Stop right there!"

I ran.


	17. Namakarana 2-06

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 2.06**

My feet slipped on the wet ground. My heart pounded like a drum. My ears were hammered by angry barks. Legs thumping, I threw myself around the corner, dimly aware in the back of my mind that even if I was moving away from the guard I was still _going the wrong way_. That knowledge didn't couldn't change a thing, though. He was between me and the bit of the fence I'd squeezed through.

Behind the warehouses was nothing but a maze of old dead ends, unused buildings, and overflowing dumpsters. I had to get out of here. On the street, there were people around. I needed witnesses, help. I couldn't get trapped in here, in these stinking alleyways with filth all over the floor and rusty metal and… and I tried to push myself even harder. No. I wouldn't let myself get caught. I wouldn't let him put me back in the locker- in somewhere _like_the locker.

I couldn't even empty my mind to leave the Other Place. My head was hurting from all the things going on in it - I couldn't just think of nothing. My throat was raw, and each breath of cold air burned. The stink that surrounded me just made it worse. Each mouthful of stench made me want to throw up, stomach churning as I ran.

I took the first turn to the right, trying to escape the building more than its guard. The walls were covered in Other Place scrawlings-  
_APATHY APATHY APATHY NO ONE HEARS THE whimpers APATHY APATHY _  
-and I the already cold air felt even cooler near it. I could barely see in the panic and gloom, and my first clue to a trashcan in my path was a jabbing pain in my left thigh. It rolled over with a clatter, and I nearly fell too, stumbling out of the collision and grabbing onto a drain pipe. The pain in my sensitive hands barely went noticed.

The barking was getting closer, and I reached the end of the alley, taking the left turn. Wrong direction; dead end. The other end was blocked up with rusty construction equipment and plastic sheeting. I turned, and the other path ended in a door.

Which was locked.

"Let me in," I shouted, tears rolling down my face. "For fuck's sake, open up!"

No response.

Hyperventilating, I looked around desperately. The dog sounded close enough that I couldn't head back. I had to find somewhere to hide. Maybe… maybe in the normal world this place smelt bad enough that it couldn't smell me? I didn't know. I couldn't think of nothing and I didn't even know what the place looked like. There was just the rust and bare concrete and brick. There was an alcove – an old bricked-up door, really – and I ducked into it. I pressed myself against the back as hard as I could, hoping beyond hope that the dog wouldn't smell me and he wouldn't hear my breathing.

I was trying to think but it wasn't working and I couldn't focus and I couldn't think of anything and God, what was I going to do? I was a skinny out-of-shape teenage girl with hurt hands; he was a security guard with a gun and a dog – and in the state I was in, I was more scared of the dog than the gun. I huddled down, trying to keep out of the light – but no, my reason for that wasn't anything so _reasoned_. I wasn't thinking by that point. I was just reacting. All I knew was that the dog was growling and it could probably smell me and it was _getting closer_. The panic and the stench of the building in the Other Place and the way I just wanted it to _go away _all pooled together, and welled up out of my mouth in the form of a vaguely dog-shaped _thing_made of dried blood and wire.

I gagged, and stuffed my forearm in my mouth to avoid being sick. I had _tasted _my feelings doing that, and that just felt wrong. I spat blood, from my suddenly bleeding lips.

And the thing I'd made wasn't chained at all. The blood-wire-dog barked, only it didn't bark, it _slammed _and I knew the sound because it was the sound the locker doors made at school when someone kicked them and… and… I couldn't look.

The dog bark-slammed again, and then the other dog yelped. The man started shouting and the dog shifted to snarling and I heard the man yell and then there was the gloing of a falling empty trash can. The dog's frantic barking receded, but the man – swearing, shouting – wasn't going. I was trying to think and it was like trying to think when I had no sleep, all fogged and blurred and…

Tired.

Crybaby – my feelings of tiredness. It was still nailed to the wall at home. I wouldn't have to make it; I already had it made. I just had to think the nails released from the wall and there it was, wailing at the edge of my vision. I didn't know how it managed to get back here so fast, but I wasn't asking questions right now.

"Go for him," I muttered. "Get in him." I clenched my hands, letting the pain stab into my awareness. I could feel the creeping tiredness from the wails and… no! "Do it," I growled. "Or I'll send you back to the wall!"

The horse-headed infant with the midnight blue skin reluctantly crawled away, the nails in it scraping against the floor. I heard it hiss, and hoped against hope it'd work. The footsteps were coming closer and closer. I heard the man swear as he stepped in a puddle, and I could hear his breathing.

"I have had it up to here with this shit," I heard him mutter. "Fucking stupid dog. Get back here, you stupid thing!" I, thank God, heard him yawn. "For fuck's sake. Going to have to chase it down. I'm not paid enough for this. Get back here, Lupe!"

And mercifully, I heard him turn on his heel and stomp away, his bad mood obvious in every footstep. I stuffed my forearm into my mouth, and tried not to whimper until he was out of hearing. Then, slowly, aching all over, I pulled myself to my feet. I licked my cracked lips. They hurt, and tasted of iron. My bottom was wet and grimy, from where I'd been sitting. I left the Other Place, and just stood there for a bit, shaking, until I realized that the man might come back.

I felt sick.

I wasn't entirely sure how I managed to hold on to the contents of my stomach until I'd squeezed through the gap in the fence and got to safety, but I did. And then I emptied about half of my lunch into a dirty alleyway.

Shit, shit, shit, I had to get back to the union offices. I checked my phone. Dad hadn't called. Oh God, what would have happened if he'd called when the guy had been looking for me? I didn't even want to think about that.

I was in a daze as I walked back. My mind was running around in loops, and I was still shaking. People might have been staring at me. I wasn't sure. I only noticed I was sort of a mess when I saw myself in a shop window.

I had to clean myself up. I found a 7-11, and went in.

"Fell down," I told the guy behind the counter when I noticed he was staring at me. "It's slippery out there, isn't it?"

One bottle of water purchased, I drank about half the bottle to wash out the taste of sick, and then used the rest to sort of blot off most of the dirt. That meant I was wetter, but at least I didn't have alley gunk on me.

Fight-or-flight? Really, really terrible for my power. My stupid body hadn't got the memo that I could imagine up scary monsters, and decided I should panic instead. And when I panicked, things went wrong. I _had _to be in control. All the time.

I… I wasn't suited for being a cape. When I grew up, I could be a parahuman detective and go work for the FBI, but it wouldn't be me on the front lines saving people.

I wiped my eyes. It hurt to think like this. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to go out and fight crime. Personally, I meant; I wanted to be strong. I wanted to be able to stop people who were picking on others. But my powers – they helped me with investigation, they helped me find things, but if I had to act on the fly, things went wrong. I'd never be someone who could just see someone being attacked and step in to protect them. Not any more than I could have before, at least, and look at me. I couldn't even protect myself from bullies, let alone someone else.

I wanted to be a superhero. I wasn't. I was just a person with powers.

Oh, I realised dimly. The lights had been back on properly in the 7-11. When had the brownout ended? I frowned, and realised I hadn't been paying enough attention to notice.

I snuck in through the front door of the union offices, trying to get to the ladies bathroom to do a proper clean up and…

"Taylor!" Dad asked, standing by the vending machine in the offices with a look of surprise on his face. "What happened?"

No such luck.

"I just went for a jog… well, mostly a walk during the brownout," I said defensively. "I couldn't read when the lights were flickering like that. I stayed in the area!" I sucked in a breath and looked down at the dirty knees of my jeans. "And… uh, yeah, there was a reason I stopped jogging. You know, it's still pretty slippery out there." I licked my lips. "And I think I need to get some lip balm. They're cracking in this cold weather."

Dad pinched the bridge of his nose. "Taylor," he said, "you should have… you…" he sighed. "You didn't go too far?" he asked.

"No," I lied. "I just was trying to find a place to sit which had light and was out of the wind." I rubbed my arms. "It's cold out there."

"We'll… we'll talk later. Just… just stay here," he asked me. "Please."

Yeah, he wasn't done yet. I ended up waiting in the offices, reading, for another hour or so. It wasn't sinking in much. I was just staring at the pages, and the words which didn't make sense. All I could think of was how scared and helpless I'd felt, and how horrible the sweatshop had been. I went and cleaned myself up in the bathroom.

Eventually Dad was done, and he said his goodbyes. "I'll be heading into the hospital this evening," he said, as we got into the car, "but I'll leave you at home, okay? If you're okay with that."

I didn't want to sit around the hospital. "Yeah, sure," I said. "Is… is your friend going to be okay?"

His lips were a thin line. It didn't seem to be good. "I hope so," he said, his tone guarded.

"How did you meet?" I asked. I wanted to talk about something normal, surround myself with things as far as possible from the Other Place and that horrible building, to get some peace from what I'd seen. Well, that and the more mundane 'oh god I was chased by a guy with a dog'.

"Oh, we go back years," Dad said. "All the way back to CANE. Me and him and a few others."

"The supervillain group?" I said, blinking. I didn't expect that.

"CANE? A supervillain group? Taylor, it was the Campaign Against Nuclear Escalation."

"Someone from CANE assassinated Reagan," I objected. "That sounds pretty supervillain-y to me."

"I know this might sound surprising, kiddo," he said, "but you can't just say a protest group is a 'supervillain group' just because a parahuman linked to them went and killed the president. It's more complicated than that. I was a member 'cause I was protesting against the way it looked like Reagan was going to make the Cold War go hot and was… you know, showing off all these 'super-men' and brand new tinkertech bombs and new nuclear weapons and his Star Wars missile defence thing… stuff like that. And, of course, he was cutting everything else when he was throwing money at these world-ending bombs. Because otherwise the Soviets might get ideas."

We came to a stop at traffic lights.

"But I blame Reagan for that. Talking about 'evil empires' and 'supervillains' and turning everything into black and white, good guys and bad guys, cops and robbers. It was treating stuff like that which made the problems. Anyway, the worst I got up to was some vandalism and… okay, we scrapped a bit with the police, but they started it! We were just protesting and then they started up with the tear gas and the water cannons."

The lights changed.

"Though I should probably thank them for that, because something good came of those riots."

"Oh?" I asked sceptically.

Dad flashed a grin at me. It was a strange expression, somehow both carefree and sheepish. "How'd you think me and your mother met?" he asked. "Singing at choir? Hardly!"

"Dad!" I said. I didn't mean to sound quite so scandalised, but… uh, yeah. I sounded pretty shocked. Hell, I _was _pretty shocked.

"Oh, it was the eighties. Things were different back then," he said. "And your mother had a hell of an arm on her."

"She was part of the police?" I asked sceptically. "What, your eyes met romantically as she beat you with a baton?"

Dad looked confused. "What, no! Not likely! She was throwing petrol bombs at them." He sighed. "She was always more of a radical than me," he added. "She had such beautiful eyes behind her army surplus gas mask. And those outfits that her and her friends were wearing were _really _flattering."

"Dad!" I managed, cringing.

"If you're going to accuse either of us being supervillain henchmen, look to her, not me. I didn't have a costume. Just some wet cloth tied over my mouth to try to help with the tear gas. She'd come prepared."

I stared at him flatly. "Okay, now you're just making things up," I said.

He grinned. "Look, if you want to pretend we sprung fully formed in a parental state, that's up to you. Whatever helps you sleep at night," he said, and then his face fell and he winced. "Oops. Sorry."

"It's all right," I said.

He sighed. "But you have to get how the world was different, Taylor. We were young, and the idea of the Cold War going hot terrified us. It would have been the end of the world, before the Endbringers even showed up. I remember I got a call from my dad once, telling me to get out of the cities, because they'd be first hit. That was afterwhat happened in Nicaragua, back in '84. Him and your grandma packed up and headed out into the country. Mind you, he was a bit… eccentric by that point, but I almost joined him."

"What happened in Nicaragua?" I asked blankly.

"Honestly? No one really knows," he said, shaking his head. "I mean, a local Nicaraguan cape caught people laying mines in their harbours, then they paraded them on TV saying they were CIA agents, and the government, our government, said they'd just kidnapped some tourists on a boating trip and it was all false allegations to try to embarrass us. Then they sent in people – capes and special forces – to rescue the people who were supposedly tourists. Then it turned out that the Soviets had sent their own capes to help Nicaragua as 'advisors'. So there's this massive parahuman fight and it's all being recorded by local journalists and… yeah."

"Oh," I said, realisation dawning. "That's the Corinto Incident, right? Yeah, I've heard of it. That was the first really public display of parahumans fighting. That was in Parahuman Studies at school. We watched the footage."

"And that's what it gets remembered for," Dad said, shaking his head. "Reagan and his damn 'Superman is real… and he's American!' speech. Trying to turn the whole mess into a 'look at how dangerous the Soviets are with their supervillains; good thing we have our own to protect us'. And what did we get from the Cuban Missile Crisis II: Electric Boogaloo? The name 'Protectorate'."

He seemed bitter. He seemed _old_. I kept silent, hoping he'd calm down. The rest of the drive back was quiet. I headed up to my room and changed. I had a nasty bruise on my thigh from where I'd run into the bin. Well, if Dad noticed that, I'd just tell him I hit a bin when I slipped. The best lies were mostly true, after all. I couldn't focus on reading, so I went downstairs and stared at the television screen. Dad seemed to be happy that I wasn't spending time in my room, though.

He'd probably have been less happy if he'd known that I was trying to work out a way to tell him that a place near his work was an illegal sweatshop, without telling him what I'd done today.

I couldn't work out how to do it, though, not least because all that tiredness which I'd built up last night seemed to be coming back. It must have been escaping the guard or… or something. I was feeling limp and listless, so when Dad got ready to head off to visit the hospital, I told him I was going to bed early.

"I think I sort of overdid it on my first day out of that place," I told him. I tried to smile. "Maybe I'm coming down with a cold."

He looked worried, but he couldn't pin it down on anything. What was he going to do, anyway? Drag me off to the hospital when I was clearly exhausted?

I lay face-down on my bed, forehead resting on my arms. Maybe I should just go to bed. Take my sleeping pills, rest.

There was one thing I could do before I did that, though.

Quietly, I snuck out of my room. The house was almost silent without Dad around. I crept into his room, which smelt of sweat and needed an airing, and wrinkled my nose at the pile of clothes in the corner. He was usually tidier. How much had he been worried about me?

Well, time to think about that later. I was here for something else. I knew the old photo albums were tucked away on the top shelf of his cupboard, and standing on a chair I could easily reach them. They were handily dated. So… hmm. What dates was I looking for? Well, there was one which was 'Early 80s' and one which was 'Late 80s', so I got them both down.

Faded photographs were tucked into sleeves. I started with the 'Late 80s' one, and got lucky. Yeah, that was Dad with a full head of hair and a slightly straggly beard standing next to a considerably thinner version of the guy he'd been talking to at work, and a black guy. Probably the Cal who'd been shot. More pictures of Dad. Him and Cal working on a placard together. The three of them holding beers and mugging for the camera. Dad and Mum, holding hands.

I turned the page. And there was Mum, dressed in – my eyes widened. Okay, yeah, that was some kind of fairly close fitting leather catsuit thingie. It was black with yellow patches on it. And she had a hood up and a gas mask around her neck. It… was sort of flattering, I had to admit. Especially since it looked like it had been armoured around the chest, which covered up that – well, I got my figure from her.

Wow. Of all the things I thought she'd did in the eighties, I didn't think she'd have been a henchman. Henchwoman. Yeah, Dad might have said that things were different back then, but come on. She was dressing up in black leather – maybe biker leathers – and wearing a gas mask and throwing petrol bombs at the police. There was a term for people like that.

I sighed. She was quite obviously posing for the shot, too. And from the nature of the posing, I could bet that Dad was taking it. I shuddered. Not going to think about that. I turned the page to get away from that image, and came face to face with a picture of a line of similarly attired people – all women, I was pretty sure. Next picture, Mum sitting next to a few other young women in the black leather without their hoods and gas masks. They were either students, or not much older. There were banners up behind them. Things like 'Troops Out Of Panama' and 'Down With The New Patriarchs'.

My head sunk into my hands. My mother had been a henchwoman in her student days and I'd never know that. My mental image of her was going to need some adjustment. I couldn't believe it. She'd gone out wearing leather and a gas mask, no powers at all, and taken on the police because… why? Why would you do something crazy like that?

Well, according to Dad, because she thought she was going to stop the end of the world.

… damn. When I put it like that, if _I _thought I could stop nuclear war that way, I'd probably do it. I shook my head. Clearly inherited villainy. I'd need to watch for villains trying to recruit me by telling me that they were really the good guys. I smiled weakly at my bad joke. My twenty-something year old mother smiled back from the faded photograph, standing among a bunch of armed leather-clad women.

I was looking more and more like her. Not in every way, of course, but I wondered properly for the first time how this was affecting Dad.

And whatever bad things she might have done, I thought, at least she was doing it because she _believed _in it. Because she thought she was helping. And even if she had been wrong and even if there hadn't been a war, she'd done her best. Or what she thought was her best.

Not like that _place _down in the Docks. My stomach squirmed in disgust. There was no higher goal there. No cause they believed in. They were making the entire building a hellhole in the Other Place, and why? So shops on the Boardwalk could get cheaper clothes. For profit. Did the guards for that place even _care _they had a bunch of people trapped in there who probably thought they were coming to America for a better life? Did they just not care? Or did they think they _deserved _it or something?

I had to stop them.

The fury burned away my melancholia. I'd been wrong earlier. I could be a hero. All I'd need was proof. Photos. Enough to take to the police. I could drop them off without being IDed, get the police to raid the place and arrest everyone responsible for this. Maybe I could discover where these clothes were going, who was buying them. Get them arrested too, or make them feel so bad about it they'd never do it again. And my powers were very, _very_good at finding things out. The Other Place would tell me where to look.

The Protectorate could fight supervillains. I could stop this 'small' crime – which wasn't small at all.

I'd need an outfit. I didn't want them finding out who I was. I'd need a camera.

And I'd need a plan.


	18. Namakarana 2-07

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 2.07**

There was a moth on my window when I finally twitched the curtains open. The motion disturbed it, and it fluttered away under a grey sky. It was a miserable-looking morning, but at least I was feeling pretty good. I hadn't had any nightmares. The sleeping pills were doing their job.

Wait. I blearily stared out the window, confused as to why everything was so blurred, before realization hit and I pinched my brow, massaging my eyes. I was getting too used to having perfect vision in the Other Place. And I wasn't exhausted, which meant I probably couldn't use Cry Baby. That was sort of annoying. The ability to make someone tired and fed up had probably saved my life yesterday. Because I'd had that thing on hand, I'd managed to drive off the guard without him seeing me. Hopefully, I'd just been a fleeing figure. I could have been anyone. I don't know what would have happened – or what I could have done – if I hadn't had it around.

Wow. A great night's sleep, and I'd already decided that me not feeling shit was a potential problem? At least I could blame this one on my fucked up power.

I'd need to come up with any other things I could force on other people to protect myself. Or see if I could make Cry Baby without needing to be tired. Thinking about what had happened yesterday, I checked my thigh. It was decorated by a nice big bruise where I'd collided with the trash can when running away. It was a fetching shade of red-purple, but least it wasn't somewhere obvious.

Limping slightly, I went to shower and get ready for the day.

…

There was ice in the milk carton. It rattled around when I swirled it. I squatted down by the fridge, and noticed that the inside was encrusted with frost. Even the vegetables had a thin layer of ice over them. I sighed wearily, brushing a lock of still-wet hair away from my face.

"Dad," I called out, "the fridge is too cold! It's all frosted up and there's ice in the milk!" I frowned, and nudged some of the icy lettuce aside. There was also quite a bit of beer in the fridge. More than there would have been normally. And two empty… what are those things called? The plastic sixpack loop things for beer cans? The ones that kill fish when they get dumped in the ocean? There were two of them.

I pushed the lettuce back into place and pretended I hadn't seen them.

"Yeah, it needs defrosting," he called back. "I've been meaning to, but it's been too cold outside."

You mean you haven't got around to it, I thought. I turned the temperature up slightly, and shook my head. I poured myself a bowl of cereal then fished out the lump of ice which fell out of the carton. I took a seat opposite to Dad, and started to eat.

"Taylor?" he asked, sitting at the table. He had his hands folded in front of him.

"Mmmphmph?" I said, with my mouthful, and swallowed. "What is it?"

"So, Taylor," he began. That wasn't a good sign. In my experience, few good things started with 'So, Taylor'. "There's something I meant to say to you yesterday, but… well, I got the phone call. We have a meeting at school tomorrow. We need to talk about how you're going to return to school, and they also want to get you to hand in the work you're meant to have done."

I was right. That really wasn't a good sign. "I have done the work," I said quickly. "Not much else to do in the hospital."

"And that's good," he said, "but we do need to talk about how you're going back."

My shoulders slumped. "I know," I said in a tiny voice.

"Now, one of the things they suggested was that you change classes," he said. "You know, so you're not around the people who are being a problem anymore."

"What, you mean like _Emma?_" I said bitterly. "That's going to help so much. They'll just have to get me in the corridors and at lunchtime. I'm sure that'll be so much of a problem for them. I just hope Winslow hasn't prepared them for the _academic _challenge of finding me."

"Oh, I've talked with them plenty," he said darkly, hands baling into fists. "They're going to listen to any future complaints. If they don't… well, they will. Trust me on this."

"What did you do, Dad?" I asked nervously.

"I know people," he said. Okay, that didn't help my concern at all. That sounded like the prelude to an admission that he actually ran the Brockton Bay branch of the Russian Mafia or something.

"Dad…" I said.

"I talked to some people on the union grapevine who linked me up with a friendly lawyer, and she gave me some advice," he added. "Helped advise me how to present my demands to them, and how to use the kind of language which made it clear I'd been talking to a lawyer. They don't want an expensive court case or the bad publicity – and she pointed out that 'My daughter tried to kill herself while locked in a locker filled with…' uh, those things."

"Used tampons," I said, with fake helpfulness.

He looked decidedly awkward. "Yes, that. The press would be _all over _that. She… uh, that is, the lawyer… well, she was shocked enough that…" he took a deep breath. "Well, the point is, if the school doesn't do everything they can to help, she said that we'd probably win any case. They knew that too."

"Well, why _aren't _you suing, then?" I asked, my voice cracking.

"Taylor," Dad said, trying to look for words. "This already happened. We settled , and that's why the hospital got paid for along with any extra care you need in the longer term, and why we got a bit extra on top of that. And another part of it is that they have to show that they're taking action to stop anything like that happening again. If they don't, they're breaching the terms of the settlement."

"Good," I said.

"The point is," he said, "when you go back, if they try anything again – anything at all – then tell the school. And tell me."

I stared at him in frustration. How could I explain that I couldn't tell? That it would just make things worse if I did? That telling never helped and… I took a breath.

Was that me thinking that, or was that Madam Secret? The thought came on so suddenly I might have almost doubted that it was my own. But that wasn't it. It was me, but it was the memory of how I felt when I had Madam Secret beaten down and chained talking.

It had felt good.

It had felt like how things had been before Mum had died.

"I'll try," I said quietly.

"Taylor. Please, promise me, you'll do more than try. Do it. Or else…" and whatever he was about to say was broken by the phone ringing. He left me sitting in silence while he got that.

"Danny Hebert speaking… oh Janice. What is…. oh shit. Shit, is he… oh." I heard a sharp inhalation. "I'll be right there," he said. "Hold on." He put down the phone. "Tim's taken a turn for the worse," he said, lips thin. "That was his wife. I'm heading to the hospital and… are you going to be…"

I thought fast. "I'll come with you," I said. I think that surprised him. He expected more protest. "But… uh, I really don't want to hang around the hospital all the time. I've seen more than enough of hospitals the past few months. I'll just go out to the Boardwalk. It's pretty close, right?"

He looked uncomfortable. "I'd prefer you close by," he said. "I really shouldn't be dragging you all over the place, when you're still not 100% yourself."

"It's not your fault what happened," I said. "But think about it, Dad! The Boardwalk and the area around it are safe. There's all that security. I'll be close, and I can come back if you call me. And there are things I need to get," I pointed out. "Like lip balm. My lips were cracking from just spending a bit of time outside yesterday. And warmer gloves, because I'm really feeling the cold in my hands."

He sighed, but acquiesced. I barely had enough time to grab a coat and what money I had in savings before we were off racing to the hospital. I had to remind Dad to keep below the speed limit several times, and that wasn't like him, because he was usually obsessively careful about his driving. I shivered at the sight of the building I'd spent time recovering in, and the memory of drug-hazed and nightmare-filled nights.

Dad handed me a bundle of dollar bills distractedly as we got out of the car. "I'll expect some change from that," he said. "Get lunch. And call me if you need help or feel…"

"Yes, yes," I said. I leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek. "I hope your friend gets better," I said, almost surprising myself with the unprovoked public display of affection. I think it surprised him too, but the watery smile it produced was worth it.

"Me too," he said.

It was just a short walk from the hospital to the Boardwalk proper. The high rise bits of the city were all clustered around this area, the grey horizon obscured by steel and glass canyons. I skirted the edge of the Ashton Park neighbourhood, passed by the glasshouse-garden structure above the Little Paris submall – wasn't going to get in there, I wasn't paying for an access pass – and stepped onto Wear Street, which was the start of the Boardwalk. It was technically right at the edge of the Docks, but you wouldn't think it was part of that area.

It was amazing, the difference half a mile made. I could still see the hospital, a looming grey structure visible over the top of Little Paris, but it didn't belong here. Bright flatscreens festooned the buildings, adverts playing on endless loops. The smart fabric stretched between the buildings was pretending to be a sunny day at the moment, and would keep on doing that even if it started raining. There were clean murals on the walls where there weren't billboards and adverts. The city even _smelt _different.

Tourists were everywhere, even though it wasn't the weekend. It probably wasn't fair to call them tourists, but as a Brockton Bay native, it was something you just did. Most of them weren't staying here. They'd just drive in or get the train, shop here, and leave. They stood out. They dressed like they had money, even if they didn't.

I knew Dad viewed it as a mixed blessing at best, which was something I hadn't really understood. Surely it was a good thing that Brockton Bay had something like this. It wasn't a real tinkertech town, like some places – such as Silicon Valley – but it helped. It would probably be bigger if we hadn't been so close to Boston, too.

Everything was better here. And didn't the advertising want you to know it? "Nostalgia for Tomorrow," proclaimed a perfume poster. "Embrace your fantasies." And of course, "Why not forget all the stress in your life?" I paused by a mural, showing a romanticised depiction of the docks. A young girl in a white dress holding a red balloon in one hand stood on a pontoon, eating an icecream and staring out of the picture. There was smart paint in the mural, too, because the white seagulls circled in the background.

Of _course _I looked in the Other Place.

It was fake. All of it. Plastic veneers peeled off bare concrete. There was a haze of – I sniffed, half-aware that I shouldn't really be able to _smell_ this sort of thing – greed and apathy and desperation in the air, like morning mist. Posters of green-eyed vaguely-female monsters declared-  
_IT'S YOUR FAULT YOU'RE POOR_  
-and I only had to shift back to the normal world to see that there, the monsters were pretty women and that the 'Because you're worth it' written in a 'flirty' font basically got the same message across.

The girl on the mural was covered in little black words of 'hate' and 'revenge' and 'contempt'. Her arms and legs had red paint thrown over them, so they dripped crimson. No. I sniffed. Blood, not paint. Or paint which smelt like blood, at least. I shook my head and walked on, hands in my pockets.

Envy, greed and worry under a mask of pretending that everything was okay. Way to break any illusions that I might have had about this place, Other Place. Thanks.

Back in the Other Place, it seemed like the wall-screens and smart fabric street-roof were glitching. In some places, they showed an iron-grey sky broken up by pixelated splodges of bright colour. In others, they dimmed into an abstract pattern of coiling serpents and watchful eyes. As I stared, one of them blinked and turned its attention to me. And another. And another, until it seemed like the entire street was staring at me.

I shuddered. Paranoia? Or was the Other Place telling me I was being watched? There were certainly cameras everywhere, and the private security force which patrolled this area kept an eye out for any signs of trouble. They were well equipped – better than the normal police – and had even managed to catch a pair of two not-very-super supervillains a year or so back. Either way, I didn't leave the Other Place. I wanted to see what those eyes and snakes did.

Shaking my head, I headed for Monarch Clothes, to get into my _real _purpose for being here.

Last night, I had put quite a bit of thought into what I'd wear when getting those pictures. I couldn't be seen doing it. Plus, I'd be superheroing, and you had to dress up when doing that. Even people robbing the local 7-11 threw on a mask, though that was probably mostly to stop any CCTV getting a picture of their faces.

On the other hand, I didn't have much cash to spend – even with the unexpected generosity from Dad – and I certainly couldn't get any of the thinkerfab or tinkertech gear which government capes or well-off supervillains had. And I was a beanpole and would look terrible in spandex.

So, as a result, my objectives in getting a costume were as follows:  
1) Stop anyone from finding out who I was,  
2) Have a costume which was comfy and warm because it was freezing outside, and  
3) Pay as little as possible doing so.

To help towards that end, I'd gone and booted up Mum's old desktop in the study, and – after struggling with myself – connected up the dialup. I hadn't wanted to, because Dad might have called, but I had to check some facts. I wanted to see how other heroes kept their identities secret.

It was, of course, easy to find out who New Wave really were. Exposed faces, public IDs. I'd decided that exposing my face was, all things considered, taking everything into account, a bad idea. Likewise, domino masks were out. I'm not even sure how they attached those things. Was there like… elastic or something? Or did they glue them on? I had no idea. They wouldn't work with glasses, anyway. And would look stupid on me.

Armsmaster, the most senior local cape, wore full self-built power armour which totally covered him in plating which could and had stopped stolen military missiles. And could turn invisible. And probably dispensed coffee. I should totally do that. Except, oh wait, I wasn't a Tinker and couldn't build power armour . Aware that I was wasting time, I had excluded all Tinkers from my search, and then waited for the painfully slow connection to update the page.

Now, Shadow Stalker, one of the local Wards – she had the right idea about things. According to her page, she was a former vigilante, and she seemed to be pretty smart about it. Obscuring garments, a full-face mask, no bare skin. If I was trying to track her down, from what I could pick up I was looking for a girl somewhere between… hmm, maybe -12-13 if she was an early bloomer, all the way up to the max age of the Wards. The Wards attended Arcadia, apparently – there's no way they'd go to a dump like Winslow – which narrowed down the pool of people she could be, but still. Much harder to find. That's the sort of thing I should go for. Full face covering, dark clothing – I could just get a hoodie – maybe a balaclava as well, so they couldn't see my hair.

Of course, if I really wanted to find who she was, I'd just go to one of their PR things and have Sniffer follow her home. Which was another reason I shouldn't join the Wards. PR things. Going and standing in front of crowds and posing or being 'security' on the Boardwalk wasn't something which appealed to me. And if I was part of the Wards, I wouldn't be able to keep me and Dad safe from people with powers like mine.

Man. That was kind of scary. It would be freakishly easy for me to find out who any cape in the public spotlight was, just by setting Sniffer to track them. It was kind of annoying that villains – for some reason – preferred to keep out of the public eye. With that in mind, it was a good thing I was a good guy. Though if it was this easy for me, it suggested that a lot of villains could probably find out who various government capes were. If they hadn't used that knowledge, it probably meant that doing so put anyone who tried it in deep shit. And a quick check did confirm that capekillers tended to meet very quick ends.

That was reassuring, in its own way. The time might come that I might need to go to the Protectorate, to the Parahuman Protection Division. I was under no illusions that I wouldn't be in over my head if something really big happened. Of course, we'd need to move cities if that happened. There was a little bit of me which would be glad to have a completely legitimate reason why I couldn't be a Ward in Brockton Bay, because that meant that I'd have an excuse to move to a new city and a new school. But it would be selfish to force that on Dad.

Plus, if I fucked up that badly, it'd mean people were trying to kill me. I wasn't a great fan of that idea.

Two-and-a-bit years. I'd just grin and bear it for that much longer. Then I could join the Protectorate as an adult. I'd be paid well for it. I could get them to pay my way through college, and I could basically get into the college of my choice, if the rumours were true. Maybe I wouldn't even have to wait that long. If I told them when I was seventeen-and-a-half, maybe, there wouldn't be a need to really join the Wards for six months. I could just stay back, go through the induction period they obviously had to have, and by the time that was over, I'd be basically ready to leave the Wards. Leave Brockton Bay. Maybe I could go to Los Angeles, on the other side of the country from here, working directly under Alexandria.

I could barely wait.

I was smiling as I walked into Monarch Clothes, ready to get my first costume. And then the smell hit me, like a punch to the stomach. Blood and misery and apathy and so many terrible things, all blended together.

The smell of the sweatshop.


	19. Namakarana 2-08

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 2.08**

Oh no. Oh no no no.

What were the _odds_? The first place I walked into was selling clothes from the sweatshop. Either I was really unlucky, or there was some vast conspiracy which led most of the shops on the Boardwalk to source their products from slave labour. Or both.

Some of the clothes on the racks before me _reeked _of the warehouse. They were wrapped in a red haze of misery.

I covered my mouth with my hands, hyperventilating into my gloves. What was I going to do? What _could_ I do? I shed the Other Place, but somehow I could still smell it. It was all around me. The entire building stank of misery and suffering and… and I had to calm down. I couldn't freak out, not in public. Even if I knew the truth behind this place and how all these people were buying things that had been made… no!

If I made a scene, I might end up back in the hospital. I didn't want to go back. I couldn't. I wouldn't. They wouldn't make me!

I only realised I was standing around at the entrance to the shop when I got jostled by an overweight man, who glared at me. I had to get out the way, to stay under the radar. I didn't want people paying attention to me. Looking around wildly, I headed over to the women section, and pretended to be paying attention to shoes. I needed to sit down, so found a seat and began to unlace my shoes as slowly as possible.

The sheer mundanity of untying my shoes calmed me down a little. I thought I could still smell the sweatshop, though, like a whiff of smoke caught in the back of my throat.

"Are you looking for anything in particular," one of the shop assistants asked me. The world shifted to grey and rust for a moment, and goat horns of tarnished metal forced their way out of her chalky skin. Then the Other Place vision faded, and she was talking again. "We have a sale currently on. So if you want me to check if we have anything in your size in the backroom, I'll be happy to help, but sale items are going quickly."

"Just checking what size I am, I'm still looking," I said hastily. "I'll ask if I see anything." Urgh. Why did people come over and try to _talk _to me? Pretending they cared. They were just as bad as some of the teachers at school, faking their interest. They didn't help me, and right now they couldn't even if they'd actually wanted to. No one could.

Fortunately, the assistant moved on. I had to calm down. I took a deep breath, tapping my gloved index fingers against my teeth. I hadn't lost control like this since I'd taught myself to control how I saw the Other Place. I was on the edge of tears. I couldn't lose control. I mustn't start crying.

But it was just too much. It was more than I could face. One illegal factory was one thing. But this was a large department store. I'd vaguely considered that there might be some dodgy shop getting under the table consignments from that place, but somewhere this big? What would I do? What could I do against something like this?

Was it even an illegal factory? Yes, I decided. It had to be. Something that looked that bad, _felt _that bad couldn't be legal. Shouldn't be legal.

I went and found the bathrooms, and locked myself in one of the cubicles until I had calmed down. I dried my eyes with tissue paper, and washed off my face. Staring at myself in the mirror, I sighed.

"You're so fucked up," I told the girl in the mirror softly. "Get a better grip of yourself."

Of course, I could do that. That was my thing. So I breathed out my worry and my agitation, and nailed it to the ceiling.

I felt better as I strolled out of the bathroom, leaving the squirming thing that wore my face behind. I didn't have to worry about anything. The sweatshop was horrible, and I was going to make sure that it was shut down. And then I'd make this place pay. Yes, it was perfectly clear and logical.

I almost felt like laughing. Yes, this shop was large. But if I shut down the sweatshop, their supply would be cut off there. And then if I could get evidence linking them to it, then I'd be able to make them pay. I hated bullies. I hated them so much. And what they were doing here, making people suffer for no good reason at all – for _cheap clothing_ – was the worst kind of bullying, because they didn't even care.

Well. I'd _make _them care.

First things first. I needed to know for sure that the clothes here were being made in that particular sweatshop. That probably wasn't the only one in Brockton Bay. I nodded to myself. Yes. Sniffer managed to find my mother's flute, so she could almost certainly follow a trail back to where these clothes had been made. I opened my eyes to the Other Place, staring at the rot and the filth. The sweatshop clothes were the cheap ones, the ones which I could actually afford. I felt like I should have been feeling bad about that, but nothing registered. Anyway, I was going to make things all better.

You, I thought at Sniffer. I'm not going to let you out this time. You're staying in here, and you're going to show me what you see. I balled my hands into fists, and the prickling of pain helped me focus. I felt like I was pushing up against a wall, like I had my face pressed against a cellophane wrap. The skin all over my body felt taut, and not quite the right shape.

And it suddenly gave way.

It didn't come as naturally as seeing the Other Place normally. There was a feeling of depth about it. Have you ever opened your eyes at the bottom of a swimming pool, and felt the pressure against your eyeballs? It wasn't like that, but it wasn't entirely _unlike _that. The pressure was behind my closed eyes. It was like the world around me was thinner, less dense than I was.

Swaying, I tried to fight off the sudden wave of vertigo which nearly overcame me. I should have been sitting down when I tried this, I thought, with a trace of tipsy whimsy.

The light was dimmer, faded. There were almost no colours. But the changes went far beyond petty things like the spectrum. I saw shapes, and they meant nothing to me. In this iron-grey, formless world, my sight was almost meaningless. Or maybe my mind wasn't working correctly, because if I focussed I could just about put together that I was staring at my own face in a mirror. It took me long, long seconds to realise that.

But that didn't matter. I didn't need normal sight. I could feel the shape of the area around me in the same way I could feel where my arms and legs were when I wasn't looking at them. Eyes wide, I drifted around the main shop floor. I knew that what I was looking at was a man, a rack of clothes, the escalators up to the next level. I was effectively blind, but I simply knew where everything was even without looking at it.

And more than that, I could see the threads Sniffer followed when she tracked things down. I could see the hair-thin strands a tall, thin man left whenever he touched one of the pieces of clothing, spiderwebs in the air quickly lost among the haze of threads that surrounded him. I could see the hand-thick iron chain which linked him by the neck to the curvy woman who stood next to him. When I paid attention to the terminal point of the chain, I could see so many other chains and threads and wires, all wrapped around the blurred, unfocussed shape of the man.

But I didn't have to just focus on that nexus. I could focus on the nexus next to him – the woman, I dimly remembered – at the same time. And the nexus behind me. And that nexus that they were standing by. So many central points. All these chains. I could see them all. I – Sniffer – didn't care that I wasn't even facing most of them.

I covered up my eyes with my hands, trying to shut it out. It didn't help. I could still see everything. Seeing without eyes. I swayed, and staggered to grab a blurred shape I knew to be a rack of winter jackets. It was all too much. My attention shifted to the jacket-nexus, and I could see the chains stretching away from it. I reached out and grabbed at the thickest one, trying to pull myself upright with something which wasn't real, and when I touched it, I knew it connected up to the sweatshop. The sensory impressions flooded in and I desperately thrust Sniffer's awareness away from me.

A wave of light and sound hit me as the world returned to something approaching normalcy. Shaking, I found somewhere to sit and tried to catch my breath. I could feel the cold sweat prickling on my brow.

That… that thing I'd made _from me _saw the world like that all the time. No wonder it was a monster. What kind of person could deal with all that and stay sane? I stared blearily at the world around me. The lights seemed so bright, and yet my awareness seemed so limited compared to what had happened then.

I took a deep breath, and wiped my forehead against my sleeve. Staring up at the humming electric lights above me, I thought about what to do next. I couldn't buy a costume from here. The things I could afford were made in that place. I could go looking for some other place. Get out of here. Return only when it was time to make them pay.

Except there was another way I could make them pay. Literally. And by doing so, I could get a proper, good-quality costume made of expensive tinkerfab-cloth. I'd just need to take what I needed from here, without paying. Technically it would be theft. Technically, and legally. But would it be_morally _wrong?

I considered it for a while. I knew for a fact that this shop was directly profiting from what I'd seen down in the Docks. And they had to know from how much they were getting the clothes for that everything wasn't quite above board. Even if they didn't know, I bet they weren't asking the questions they should have been asking. Which made them party to the crimes.

From a certain point of view, that would make it karmic justice if I 'obtained' my disguise from this place. I wouldn't need to roll up the clothes and stick them under my coat or anything risky like that. All I'd need to do would be to send a doll-cherub or two to take the things I'd use back home. I could hide them under my bed. No one would ever know.

Legally it would be stealing. And would remain so even if things like 'my parahuman talent tells me that they're benefitting from slave labour' were admissible as evidence. Maybe they were. I wasn't up to date on parahuman law. They totally had to have some kind of way for psychic FBI agents and the like to submit evidence, right? No, I was getting distracted.

I had to be honest with myself. Was I doing this for the right reasons? I weighed up the option. On one hand, I was going to be stealing… oh, probably over a hundred dollars. At least. The coats alone were selling for more than that. That was wrong, at least normally.

But on the other hand, I wasn't doing it for my own benefit. I couldn't wear these clothes around normally. They were going to be part of my superhero costume. And the shop was benefitting from really, really horrible things. So I would be depriving the bad guys of stuff, and using it to help the people they were hurting. And I needed a good disguise, or they might trace me back and then they might hurt Dad. And me, too.

In the balance, it was probably morally acceptable for me to do this. As long as I didn't get into the habit.

And I couldn't wear things made in the sweatshop. I just _couldn't_. It was wrong. And, I realised, if I was doing things in the Other Place when wearing those clothes, I'd be smelling it all the time. It'd be up against my skin. I'd be touching it.

No. I couldn't. I wouldn't.

I took a deep breath, and made my choice.

I didn't bother trying to look innocent or like I didn't want to be noticed. Years of bullying had taught me that trying to look like you didn't want other people to pay attention to you just made them pay more attention to you. So I just checked out the place like I was looking around, and probably wanted to compare the coats in several shops before I bought anything. I wanted something black or grey, which would be hard to see at night. I made sure to ask one of the shop assistants for help, too. Her name, according to her badge, was Hello-My-Name-Is-Mary.

"Um, so," I asked her, "are these clothes ethically made?"

"Excuse me?" she said.

"Well, you hear about these sweatshops where clothing gets made," I said. "None of this comes from sweatshops, right? Everything is all above board?"

Hello-My-Name-is-Mary shook her head. "It's all ethically sourced," she told me.

Well. She was lying to me. Or didn't know. Either way, that meant that the shop was lying to its customers and pretending things were all above board. Some of my reluctance melted away at that. They had it coming.

"Is there anything in particular you're looking for?" she asked.

I frowned. "Something warm, but not too heavy," I said. "I want to… you know, be able to move in it properly. Not one of those long coats which you can't run for the bus in."

"Three-quarter lengths are coming in," she said encouragingly. "Frock coats were very big this Christmas. We have our selection over here."

I poked around, examining the various coats. These weren't cheap. Hundreds of dollars each, minimum. But they were very nice looking. I stroked the sleeve of a charcoal grey double-breasted coat, and held it up against me. Oh God, it would work so well. That shade would totally be almost invisible in the shadows at night, I was sure. I tried it on, and it was a little big around the shoulders, but it felt really nice.

"Won't that get wet and heavy?" I asked.

"It might look like it's wool, but it's not," Hello-My-Name-is-Mary said helpfully. "It's machine-washable. It's made of really clever synthetic stuff which feels like wool, but doesn't absorb water in the same way. You don't need to have it dry cleaned."

That was helpful. I was probably going to get muddy or dirty at some point, and there was no way I could get away with taking anything I wore to be dry cleaned. If I could just take it down to a Laundromat when Dad was at work, though… yes, that'd work. Hello-My-Name-is-Mary had just sold me on it. 'Sold' me. I tried a few more on, but I'd made my mind up.

"Thanks for the help," I told her, "but all these things just seem to be too big around the shoulders and feel loose. I mean, I like the length, but…" I shrugged. "It's so hard finding stuff when you're a beanpole," I said self-effacingly.

"Have you considered a different cut?" she asked. "Frock coats are kind of designed to make you look thinner by having a narrow wait and wider shoulders and," she waved her hands, "the flared bit at the bottom, but you'd probably look better with something more straight up-and-down."

I shook my head. "I might come back," I said, "but I think I might need to look somewhere else. Your sizes are a bit on the wide side."

She snickered. "I've noticed that too," she said. "Well, if you want to try one of our other styles, come back and I'll try and help."

I sighed to myself as she went off to someone else. She had seemed nice, but this whole place was so fake I couldn't trust it. Especially when they sold things from that sweatshop down at the Docks. Shifting my vision to the Other Place, I made a winged doll, and started to walk away from the coats.

"Go, take it, put it under my bed," I told the doll. When I turned around, the coat I'd tried on was gone. I smiled faintly to myself. Drifting around the shop, I slowly added a few more things to my collection, making sure to check each thing I was 'buying' was a good size. By the end of my browsing, I'd picked up two pairs of business dress pants in nearly the same shade of grey, and a black high-necked sweater. They were all on the more expensive side, but of course that was just so I could avoid the stuff that were tainted in the Other Place. Besides, it hurt this place more if I took those things. After a moment's thought, I grabbed a dark grey hat, of the sort PIs wore in those old films. I was being a detective, after all. Oh, and a very nice pair of black leather gloves which fit like… uh, like a glove.

To stop anyone getting suspicious of what I'd been doing in there, I paid for a cheap pair of gloves that fortunately didn't stink of the sweatshop. Then I walked out, feeling lightheaded, even a little giddy. That had been so easy. The world was spinning slightly and I was hyperventilating, so I sat down for a moment, on a bench outside the shop.. I couldn't let it go to my head. I just had to go on and be normal and get the rest of my shopping done. 'Shopping'. Heh.

My giddiness was spiked by an irrational surge of jealousy as I watched some of the people walking out of the shop. And the worst thing was that it_wasn't_ irrational. I must have taken over $500 dollars of clothes – the coat alone had been $250. The stuff I'd swiped was worth more than we'd normally spend on half a year of my clothes, but people were wandering out with even more than that. Just casually bought. They didn't even think about how much money they'd just spent. They were too busy talking on their smartphones or doing things on smartglasses. That wool-but-better fabric sounded like tinkerfab, too - was there anything these people had that _wasn't_ some kind of futuristic luxury dreamed up in a parahuman's lab?

If I was going to be honest, my turmoil had two layers. There was the bit of me which wanted to shake them and shout about where their toys and finery had come from, the conditions facing the workers who'd made some of them. Surely they'd do something, change how they acted if they knew? But there was also simple jealousy. I wasn't the sort of girl who obsessed over clothing, but… it'd be nice to get expensive things like that. Like what Emma got. Back when we were friends, I used to get really nice presents from her, and even now I knew that she always got the latest stuff. Because her dad was rich.

It wasn't fair.

I had a headache, a dull ache right behind the eyes, so I went to buy lunch and find a place to sit. I deliberately didn't check the Other Place at all when I was doing it. I didn't want to see anything that would put me off my food.

With a packaged ham sandwich, a bag of chips and a bottled drink, I sat down on one of the gardens under the false blue sky of the Boardwalk. And it was just as well that I was sitting down, because just as I unscrewed the bottle, a sudden wave of cold shivers hit me. They ran up and down up my spine and I cramped up, my abdomen aching. I whimpered.

Nothing strange seemed to be going on. Just people going about their day. There were several other people in this small garden, eating lunch, and none of them seemed to be having any problems.

Maybe it was a sign I'd been overusing my powers. I wasn't sure if I'd ever used my power so often, in such quick succession. I certainly hadn't been moving things around like that. And I'd read online that most Thinkers got headaches if they used their abilities too often. I was basically a Thinker, too – just one who made constructs from the things they thought of – so it looked like that limitation applied to me to. And by my best guess, making teleporting wiredolls was much more 'exhausting' than smaller effects, or just looking into the Other Place.

I sighed, and took a deep breath, trying to settle the unpleasant nausea and dizziness I felt. I supposed that was another place I paid for the flexibility in my powers. Chris Bankron had been able to teleport things around all day in _Going Places _. Or, rather, the guy he played had. And it hadn't been a particularly good movie.

Shouting drew my attention, and I half-turned to see a kid about my age being manhandled by a pair of boardwalk security guards. The overturned skateboard on the ground by him told me everything I needed to know. There were "No Skating" signs up all over the Boardwalk, and the security enforced that pretty strictly. He tried to protest, but they didn't pay any attention.

I wanted to intervene. Yeah, sure, he had been skating where he wasn't meant to, but you heard rumours about what the security guards did here. Well, I heard rumours, mostly from Dad, who called them a bunch of thugs with badges and said they had all the worst traits of the police and none of the good ones. But what could I do?

Boredom, I thought suddenly. If I could make the guards bored, they wouldn't keep on doing what they were doing. Boredom, boredom, boredom… grey, clinging, smoky, like the days I spent in the psychiatric hospital I'd spent with _nothing to do_. I imagined it, recalled it, and exhaled. It took shape immediately, a grey column of fireless smoke with no features or details.

Huh. Boredom seemed to be pretty easy to imagine and didn't require much detailing. That might be useful later.

"Go," I whispered to it. The grey fog crept along the ground, roiling and boiling, and sunk into the two guards, who faded to a greyer shade in the Other Place. I smiled, and waited for it to take effect.

Nothing had happened, though. Not in the time it took for them to leave my line of sight. Why hadn't it worked? Surely if they were bored, they would have just gone off and done something else? Maybe I hadn't made the construct strong enough. Or maybe they were well trained enough that they did their job even if they were bored.

I sighed. That had been a no-show. Although apparently I wasn't all that great at affecting emotions which weren't my own, if that was anything to go by. Urgh. Apparently, I'd need to learn how to get people to do what I wanted, if this was going to be really useful. Great. Thank you, power. If I knew how to get people to do what I wanted, I'd have friends.

Dusting down my clothes, I rose and dumped my rubbish in a bin. I might as finish getting everything I needed, and then I could just go find a place to read. Maybe the library.

But first I needed some gear which wasn't sold in normal clothing shops, so I headed toward the army surplus store on the edge of the Boardwalk. It smelt slightly of stale sweat, and I got the distinct feeling that it didn't see too many women.

The adverts in the shop were all talking about patriotism and the need to be ready and 'What would you do if an Endbringer attacked?'. Well, let's see, I would end up a refugee or die of drowning, end up a refugee or die of radiation poisoning, or get to stay in Brockton Bay because I was now stuck in an internment camp or die from weird psychic bullshit. Sorry, Sammy's Surplus, but I'm not sure you're going to be as much help as you think.

A sudden cloud of depression descended on me. Except now I was a cape. I should be volunteering with the PPD for one of the parahuman reserve groups, even if I wasn't going to register with the government. Even some _criminals _did that, though that was probably because they thought it bought them lighter sentences and a route for rehabilitation. And I wasn't a criminal.

But… I mostly just had Thinker powers. What could I do? They didn't release actual figures, but everyone knew the casualty rate for fighting an Endbringer was really high. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to see an Endbringer. I paled at the thought of what one of those _things_, those living natural disasters would look like in the Other Place. I'd have to look at it if I wanted to do something against it. If the sweatshop had been that bad, what would something which had killed millions look like?

But surely it was my responsibility to help, right? I just… didn't want to face something like that. I didn't want to die.

No. I shouldn't think about things like that. The Protectorate didn't send parahumans who couldn't help to those things, and I was too young anyway. If it came to it, I'd deal with it, but for now I didn't have to think about that kind of thing. To get away from these morbid thoughts, I continued looking for the final parts of my costume.

My mother had managed to avoid getting caught when carrying out acts of villainy with a gas mask and balaclava, so apparently that set-up worked. It made sense. It would make it hard to identify me, and on top of that, it might help against gas or smoke, or even some cape powers. There was bound to be a villain with poison gas powers or someone who made worm things that tried to crawl in your mouth. I had considered trying to dig through the junk in the basement or the attic to see if I could find her old one, but it probably wouldn't be in great shape after twenty years even if I could find it.

Also, I really didn't want Dad going 'Hmm, new superhero in town wearing what looks to be my wife's old costume from her days as a henchwoman. I wonder who that could be?'.

It wouldn't end well.

It wasn't too hard to find where they were stocking the gas masks, and they had an entire range of balaclavas. I decided to go for one of the better ones, with a foil lining. It looked warmer and more comfortable, and I'd be wearing it quite a bit. I also vaguely remembered seeing on some crime show that foil linings could block microwave cameras, so maybe it would make it harder to see who I was.

I had enough cash for it, but – I pursed my lips, and winced slightly from the cracked skin – I didn't want to be associated as someone buying something like that. Gas masks weren't exactly regular purchases. And if I was in charge of a group looking for criminals, I'd be suspicious of people buying gas masks and balaclavas.

Well, the solution to that was obvious. Three barbed wire doll cherubs later, and the gas mask and balaclava were under my bed, while the money for them was in the cash register. That wasn't stealing at all. In fact, _I_ was technically being cheated, because I couldn't return them if they weren't up to standard.

And I was feeling rotten. No, really, really bad. I felt sick and dizzy, and my lips had started bleeding again. The guy behind the register looked worried, and asked if I was feeling okay.

"A bit dizzy," I admitted. "I'm just going to go outside and find somewhere to sit down for a bit. I'm sorry, I just get low blood sugar when I don't eat for a while and everything goes a bit fuzzy and I just realised I missed lunch, sorry. It's not diabetes. I'll be fine."

I'm not sure if he believed me – in fact, I'm certain he didn't, but he let me go and I managed to find a bench out in the fresh air and sit down, holding my head in my hands. Ow. Ow ow ow. I guess I had proof that overusing my powers did a number on my body. Great. Just great.

But on the other hand, I now had my costume, hidden under my bed. I could go about making the world a better place. Or at least, I thought with a sinking feeling, I could do so the day after tomorrow. Because tomorrow I had that stupid meeting up at the school, talking about when I was going to be back. I really wasn't looking forwards to it. I was trying to shut down an illegal sweatshop and really help people, and I didn't need a school which couldn't even keep me safe getting in my way. They didn't care about me, anyway. They probably didn't want me back.

Maybe Dad would be feeling stressed enough with the whole thing with his friend that he would reschedule it?


	20. Namakarana 2-09

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 2.09**

No, of course Dad didn't cancel the appointment at the school. That would be too much like good luck.

Not that I wanted him to be feeling bad enough to cancel. I mean, his friend was maybe-dying. I didn't want him to have to go through this. Not one bit.

I just didn't want to have to go through this, either. Especially since I hadn't got much sleep last night. Lying there in the dark, the enormity of what I'd done hit me in a sudden attack of nerves. I'd stolen hundreds of dollars' worth of clothing. What had I been thinking? I could have been caught. I'd heard rumours at school that the Boardwalk guards had killed someone they caught shoplifting and it had all been hushed up. And now it was all under my bed and what if Dad looked under there?

In the end, Dad had all-but-pulled me out of bed, and I'd had to go hammer Cry Baby to the wall. I came out of the bathroom washed, awake, and feeling somewhat more human.

"See," Dad told me. "I said you'd feel better once you were out of bed and splashed some cold water on your face." He chuckled weakly. "Remember, you're still more of a morning person than me. I need coffee as well as water."

He didn't know it, but he'd actually raised an interesting point. What would happen if I trapped Cry Baby in a coffee jar instead of just nailing him to a wall? Years of living with Dad had made me connect the smell of coffee with waking up. Would that kind of association keep him locked away longer? I'd have to try that out some time.

"… or maybe not," Dad said, mistaking my musings for zoning out. "Come on, kiddo, let's get some food into you, and I'll put on some more coffee."

Dad was wearing a suit, and he'd made me put on a blouse and a plain black skirt. They were both on the small side, because they weren't new and I'd shot up like a weed. I tried not to be bitter about the fact that the first time I had nice, new, smart clothes that actually fit me, I couldn't wear them. I had to keep them hidden under my bed. Not only were they my costume, but Dad would start asking hard questions if I showed them off. Ironic, I supposed.

No, instead I got to wear a blouse which was too tight around the shoulders, and showed off the wristbands that covered the scars on my arms. Of course, I couldn't even _try_ to hide the ones on my face. I hadn't thought to get any makeup yesterday, and I wouldn't really know how to use it if I had. I'd need to work out how soon, though. If I could cover them up, hopefully no-one would stare at them. I just knew people would start calling me something stupid if I didn't deal with it soon – 'stripe face' or 'skid mark' or whatever.

We were quiet on the way over. Well, _I_ was quiet on the way over. Dad was trying to reassure me, telling me everything was going to be fine, but I didn't even need to check the Other Place to know that he was lying to me. And when I did, I could see the nervous flicker of his flames, which were just a damped corona compared to the inferno he'd had recently, whipped by an unseen gale. He was worried enough that it was overcoming his anger.

Well. Fine. It didn't matter. I had enough anger for the two of us. And if I didn't before, I certainly did after I saw the Other Place reflection school from the outside.

It was so… unremarkable by the standards of that place.

How dare you, I thought furiously at the Other Place. How dare you show it as 'not that bad'! As 'no worse than anywhere else'! It should have been a wretched place of torture! The jail it was, pulsing with all the pain and misery inside! Not… not just filthy and dilapidated and rusted, like everywhere else in the Other Place. Even if what had happened to me hadn't painted it to match the interior of the locker – and it should have! – then surely the years of misery, of isolation, of everything terrible that they'd done to me should have left its mark!

I balled my hands into fists and seethed. I preferred being angry over scared. I certainly wasn't crying. The blurriness in my vision when I left the Other Place was just a sign that I might need new glasses. Or that I was getting too used to my perfect vision in the Other Place.

"Are you okay?" Dad asked.

"No," I muttered, wiping my eyes on my sleeve. How could I possibly be okay? What kind of stupid, _stupid _question was that? Why couldn't I ever get nice things? I hated my stupid power. All it did was tell me things I'd known for years – the world was rotten and full of lies. "Let's get this over and done with," I said unhappily, reaching out and squeezing his hand.

It was a school day today. I hadn't really thought of that before, but as we reached the building I could hear the noises of kids moving from class to class. A cold hand closed around my stomach at the realisation. There were people here. I might get stared at.

I would get stared at.

No. No one was going to look at me. I choked down a sick bubble of laughter, because I didn't want Dad to notice. It would be business as usual. That was my life. Either everyone ignored me, or I grabbed all the wrong kinds of attention. Being ignored was better, but still not nice. I knew _all _about loneliness. I knew all about people not wanting to talk to me, pretending I wasn't there. I barely had to imagine it.

My loneliness was something like a heat haze, an almost invisible cloud of warped air which made everything seen through it seem further away. It whispered faintly, in different voices, but I couldn't make out what it was saying. In the midst of the mist were a few isolated butterflies, with rust-red wings. I chained them together, and the cross-linked chains made a protective cordon around me.

I thought I'd call it Lonely Flight. No, wait. That sounded dumb. Distant Haze. Yes, that sounded better. Well, somewhat better. No, it was terrible too. I needed something… pithy. Like 'Isolation'. Actually, that worked. I'd make a note of it.

I still needed to think of a name for my cape identity. It was so hard. How did people come up with things that sounded good?

A hulking monster with open wounds on his hands and face, and a bestial – maybe goatish – cast to his features ambled down the halls. I stepped in his way and he stepped around me without any sign of acknowledgement. "'Scuse me," he said to Dad, "are you lost?"

Dad paused. "I'm just looking for the principal's office for… well, I have an appointment with her," he said, looking around. "It's for…" he looked straight over me. "Well, I need to talk to her."

"Up the stairs," the hulking monster – a jock type in the normal world – said with a shrug. "There's a sign and stuff, yeah."

"Thank you," Dad said, frowning with an edge of confusion on his face.

"No probs," the guy said, ambling off.

I inhaled Isolation again. "So, come on," I told dad

Dad blinked. "Where were you, Taylor?" he asked, frowning.

"Behind you," I said glibly. "That guy almost walked into me. And," I swallowed, "I didn't want him to see me." That wasn't technically a lie, anyway. I had stepped behind Dad, and I _hadn't _wanted the guy to see me.

He seemed to accept what I said. That had been a mistake, hiding myself like that. He'd noticed I wasn't there. Or that he couldn't remember who I was, maybe. I wasn't sure exactly how the power worked, but I was willing to bet it made people ignore me in the same way everyone at school did.

Either way, I shouldn't have done that. But that would be a very useful talent. As we headed up the stairs, I had to resist the urge to smile. I wasn't a very strong parahuman in any one field. Sure, I could emotionally nudge people, but there had been a Canadian villain a few years ago who could make anyone fall in love with him, which made my nudging pale in comparison. Of course, he'd eaten a drone missile to the face – maybe it had been attracted to him too – so that kind of power was more trouble than it was worth. I might have weak individual powers, but I had a whole grab-bag of effects, all coming from my basic Thinker power to see the Other Place.

I had a slow dawning suspicion that I might be more similar to Eidolon than Alexandria. Only, you know, vastly, massively weaker and less flexible. So not much like him, but he was the most famous hero with lots of powers who I could think of off the top of my head. I wasn't much of a cape geek.

"Taylor?" Dad asked, pausing before the door to the principal's office, "are you feeling all right?"

I took a deep breath. "Okay," I said. "Let's…" I paused, "get this show on the road?" I ended up turning it into a question when I didn't mean to.

He grinned faintly. "That's the spirit," he said.

After a short wait in an antechamber, we were let in to see the principal. Principal Blackwell was short, with a narrow face and a strong nose which left you feeling you were staring at the edge of an axe. She had blonde hair in a bowl cut. I could see the darker roots.

Of course, in the Other Place, she was a dog-faced monster, bone-spikes protruding from her neck. I didn't need to be told she was a bitch, but here it was in an undeniable form. The monstrous hound forced into women's clothing had pale grey fur, but there were bald, scabbed patches. Her hands had patches where it looked like the flesh had been torn away. I didn't want to look. I had to be focussed on the normal world. I forced myself back to reality, and hoped she hadn't been paying too close attention to the expressions on my face.

"Taylor, Mr Hebert" she said, an edge of warmth in her voice that was almost certainly false. "I'm glad you came to talk. And Taylor, how are you feeling?"

"I don't feel like I'm about to kill myself, if that's what you're asking?" I said bitterly. My power had already told me she was going to be a bitch about things.

Beside me, Dad winced and the expression on the principal's face flickered, as she tried to find something to say. "Um. That's nice," she managed. She shifted slightly. "Please, take a seat," she said. "We're here to discuss your return to school, Taylor. I'm please to find that you're feeling better."

Because it was costing you and the school board lots of money when I was in the psych hospital, I didn't say. "Yes," I said.

"Now, I understand if you don't feel that you can return immediately, but you need to think about your future and your grades this year and…"

"I've done all the work I was set," I said. There had been so much free time in the hospital, I was actually annoyed when I ran out of schoolwork. At least it filled the time. I pulled the first of the green card folders I had with me out of my bag. "Here they are," I said.

She blinked. "I'll see your teachers get them," she said, taking them from me. "At least you were able to get them done. That at least should mean that you won't be too far behind."

"Now," my dad said, clearing his throat. "The last time we spoke, I still had some issues with her coming back. You hadn't persuaded me that you'd put enough precautions to stop something like this happening again." He squeezed my arm. "How do we know she's going to be safe?"

The principal started talking. She went on and on about 'safety precautions' and 'systematic failures' and dense polysyllabic words which all basically meant 'we don't want to be sued'. Handing out anti-bullying leaflets? Putting up new posters about a help hotline? Telling the other students – who were at best apathetic and at worst actively malevolent – to report bullying and not turn a blind eye to it? How could that possibly help? Of course it wouldn't. But they could say that they were 'taking precautions' and so cover their asses against a lawsuit.

Just wonderful.

"If you wanted to do something to stop it happening again," I said, trying not to clench my teeth, "then you could expel the people who did it! I mean, I only nearly lost fingers! I could have died! It… it was attempted murder! What have you done to punish Emma, Sophia and Madison for it?"

Principal Blackwell sighed. "Well, to put it plainly with you…" she laid her hands upon the table, "we can't punish people for something we don't know they did. We have already investigated this incident, and while something clearly went terribly, terribly wrong…"

"They did it," I said hotly.

"No one saw it happen… I believe even you agree that there was no one else around at the time, and the girls you are accusing were questioned by the police," Principal Blackwell said. "I'm sorry Taylor, but there is no proof. We can't do anything without proof, and even if there was proof, it would be serious enough that we would simply do what the police told us to."

"Proof? You want proof?" I said hotly, pulling the second folder out of my bag. "What about all the other things they've done? I started keeping records at the start of last semester. September 8. Madison poured pencil shavings onto my head and took every chance she got to push my books off my table. Sophia pushed me over on the stairs, and also in gym. She threw my clothes into the showers, so I had to wear my gym clothes. I got six really nasty emails. After school, they got me around near the big trash bins and threw my bag in them. That's one day. Then there's the nineth, the tenth… oh, it goes on."

I coughed, tasting the metal and rest and stink of the Other Place, and tried to calm down. I had to stay in control. "Read it if you want," I said, coughing again. The world dimmed slightly, and I squeezed my hands against the arms of my chair. The pain helped me focus on normalcy.

I watched as she flicked through the paper. She was frowning. An outsider might even think she was concerned. Not me. I'd seen her. She was just pretending to care. She was just a liar. A fake.

Oh, I'd _make _her care.

Sympathy was a little worm of tarnished, sea-worn silver. I wondered why it looked so familiar, and then it struck me. It looked my mother's flute. Even as I made that realisation, it started piping out a sad little song. It squirmed through the air and crawled across her monstrous Other Place face and into her ear.

I could see the quiver in Principal Blackwell's hands as she reached the end of the first page. Yes. It wasn't so easy to ignore it all like this when you actually have some _fucking empathy_, is it? "Taylor," she said, "I… is this every day?"

"Pretty much," I said. "Things got a bit better towards the end of last semester, but of course, they were just preparing this."

"I," she licked her lips, "I can see why you… you might blame them, but you have to understand here. These things are… well, they're not in the same ballpark. They're severe, yes, and… I don't know how we missed things like this happening. You should… you could have reported these things."

I snorted. "The teachers knew. They just ignored it. And I tried reporting it back when it started, but that just made it worse," I said bitterly. There had been one teacher who had listened, but then she went on maternity leave and her replacement was a useless idiot who wanted to be liked. Like Mr Gladly, but _worse_. They'd paid me back with interest for all the times I'd tattletaled on them.

"Still," she ran a hand through her short hair, "I hope you have to understand that if the school – as an organisation – doesn't know what's going on, we can't do anything about it."

"What good would it do?" I asked bitterly. "Teachers have seen them doing this sort of thing to me, and they just let it happen. At most, those three just have to get more subtle."

"I understand this must be very distressing for you…" she began.

I exhaled, and added a little doll with a contemptuous expression painted on its blank porcelain face to her shoulder. Leading in, it grabbed her ear with its two bladed hands, and leaned in close. "You're a terrible person," it whispered in a little girlish voice. "You're failing her. Why are you ignoring her? You're doing it wrong. Did you become a teacher to do things like this? Why aren't you helping? She almost killed herself. Imagine the pain she's going through."

Stupid treacherous construct. It was clearly telling her what she was afraid of. Because I hadn't tried to kill myself. It was working, though. In the normal world, I could _see _her squirm with guilt. Because that was what the doll was. It was all the guilt I knew she _should _have been feeling.

"… and I think we can all agree that you shouldn't be in any of the same classes as these three girls," Principal Blackwell said. Her lips were thin, and her entire posture was slightly slumped. "I know you think they were behind that whole… that whole unpleasantness with the locker, but you, please, please, I'm sorry Taylor, but we can't act here. The police have taken it out of our hands. I'm not saying I don't believe that you – at the very least –_think _it was them."

My dad cleared his throat. "What can you do, then?" he asked.

"We can make changes at the school level," she said, "and one of the things we can do is make sure you're not in any of their classes. That should reduce the chance of anything happening. In addition… we didn't know how bad things were. This is the first time I've found out about this. I had no idea what was happening. Yes, you'd alleged that they were behind it, and there were some reports of possible issues between you and those three, but nothing this… sustained."

She looked genuinely shocked. If I hadn't known better, I might even have believed she was innocent in this. Maybe she hadn't had the full details, but that was because she'd turned a blind eye. That wasn't an excuse. And the best she could give me was not being in the same classes as those three? I seriously doubted that would help much, but my new friend Isolation might tilt the scales there. If I could hide from them in-between lessons, this might actually work out.

Especially if I could give them a little taste of guilt. Who knows? It might even help them reform, if they felt bad about what they'd done. Nothing could make up for what they'd done to me, but at the very least if they felt bad about it they wouldn't do anything to me again. I'd settle for that if I had to, even if I really wanted to get them thrown into one of those SuperMaxes where you spend 23 hours a day in solitary. Even then, their 'lockers' would be larger and cleaner than the one they put me in.

In the end, we 'came to an agreement'. I would be heading back to school on the Monday after next, I'd be moved classes so I wasn't doing any of the same things as them, and best of all, she had taken a photocopy of my log. Maybe I wouldn't get them punished for the locker, but at least I might get_something _out of it.

I guess Principal Blackwell must have been feeling bad about the blind eye she turned to everything.

Dad had me do stuff with him for most of the day – he seemed happy about how things had turned out, which was good – so it was evening by the time I got some free time to myself. I left him watching the television, and flicked through the paper. The Docks seemed to have quieted down, so at least I wouldn't be walking into the middle of a gang war if I went down there. Or at least, not a gang war big enough to make the paper.

Then I got a little distracted filling in the crossword. I got about half-way through before I got bored. I hadn't really bothered with them before, but they'd helped pass the time back in the hospital. Plus, I'd figured practicing that kind of puzzle might help me with interpreting the metaphors of the Other Place. Still, my attention wandered, and I started doodling on the paper. I tried playing tic-tac-toe against myself, but I always won. And lost.

I paused. Oops. I'd started with a circle, not a cross that time. And the letter 'I' in the centre of the circle made it look like a slit-eyed pupil. I tilted the paper so the 'I' was straight, and the tic-tac-toe grid was at about 45 degrees. That didn't look half-bad. I drew it again. Yeah. It was sort of like an eye looking out through prison bars.

I went and got our tatty old thesaurus down from the bookshelf. I still had to find a name, after all. I looked up 'eye'. Eyeball, orb, optic nerve, peeper, lamp, headlight. Okay, all of them were pretty terrible. 'Peeper' just sounded like the like of thing some skeevy voyeur supervillain might call themselves. No help there.

Frowning, I went and looked up 'prison'. Penitentiary, slammer, clink, lock-up, bastille, can, cooler, panopticon, dungeon, jail, stockade. "Fear me, I am Slammer!" Yeah, perfect. It was as bad as 'Peeper'.

On the other hand, both Bastille and Panopticon sounded promising. But Bastille sounded a bit French. And I didn't know what on earth 'panopticon' actually meant.

I pulled out the dictionary. Bastille [ba-steel; French bas-tee-yuh], noun, plural bastilles [ba-steelz; French bas-tee-yuh]: (initial capital letter) a fortress in Paris, used as a prison, built in the 14th century and destroyed July 14, 1789. Alternatively, any prison or jail, especially one conducted in a tyrannical way. Not a very heroic name, and nothing particularly close to my powers.

I checked the other entry. Panopticon [pan-op-ti-kon], noun: a building, as a prison, hospital, library, or the like, so arranged that all parts of the interior are visible from a single point, I read.

That was _perfect_. I could actually _do _that.

Plus, there was already a cape called Panacea, so cape names which were probably Greek – 'pan-' was Greek, wasn't it? One of their gods? – were totally acceptable and were kind of classy. And didn't involve announcing to the world that you were called 'Slammer'.

I closed the book with a snap, smiling faintly to myself. Good.

Then I went and spent the rest of the evening with Dad. We watched TV together, he awkwardly tried to get me to talk about whether I was nervous about going back to school, and I asked how his friend was. "Not good," was about all I got from him. From the impressions I got, even if he pulled through, he wouldn't be the same man he was before. Whether than was because of brain damage or some horrible injury or – I paled at the thought of how close I got to losing fingers – gangrene or whatever, it wasn't going to be pretty.

And his son was dead. Dad mentioned in a somewhat vague way that he'd be going to the funeral and how I didn't have to come if I didn't want to.

"I'll come if you want me to," I said, almost surprising myself. "You know, if… if you think it would help or something? I mean, I didn't know him or…" I trailed off.

It certainly surprised Dad. "Uh… thanks for the offer," he said, "but… well, we'll see how you feel at the time. How I feel, too."

Dad was tired. With everything that had been going on, he needed his rest. A good night's sleep would be good for him.

This was all true, but I still felt bad about breathing out my tiredness in the form of Cry Baby and setting it on him. The midnight-blue-skinned horse-headed baby clung to his chest, wailing. He yawned, stretching, and rubbed his eyes. I tried my best to look tired, even though I felt like it was the morning and I was all prepared to face the day ahead of me.

Sorry, Dad. I promised myself that I'd try to be back soon so I could take Cry Baby back. I really hoped I wouldn't need to pull it away in an emergency.

I gave him time to go to bed, took a shower and brushed my teeth. I didn't get into my nightclothes, though. Wearing my towel, I crept out and checked that Dad's light was off. Then I returned to my room.

Hands shaking, I pulled my 'borrowed' clothes out from under the bed. They were sitting there. Waiting. Promising.

I quickly got dressed in the pants, shirt and sweater. It wasn't much of a superhero costume – I looked more like one of those young businesswomen who worked in the techsector near the Boardwalk – but that was just the first layer.

The frock coat was double breasted. Both rows of buttons were real, too, which gave me a bit of trouble until I realised how to do it up. The security tag was still on, but I had a barbed-wire cherub teleport it off, leaving that intact. It might be childishly amusing to hide it in Emma or Madison's bag so next time they went into Monarch, they'd have the alarms go off.

No, wait, there might be something in it that would let them know which coat it was from. It might get linked to me., somehow. I'd just have to go drop the security tag in the harbour. Also, I wanted them punished for something they'd actually done. Then the charges would stick.

It was a bit big on me, but that didn't matter. I had an idea. I'd get one of those… I didn't know the name, those things that soldiers wore to carry things with. Those vest things with lots of pockets on them. I'd wear that _under _my coat, and I could just have a construct move things from the vest-thing to my hands if I needed them. There were all kinds of things that might be useful. Disposable cameras, pepper spray, a taser. Maybe I could even take some tinkertech gadget from a criminal, and use it for the name of good. But since I didn't have that, I put the disposable wind-up camera I'd bought in the pocket of the coat.

Getting all my hair under the balaclava was more of a pain. In the end, I had to do it up in a ponytail, and then pin it up in a bun. I'd need to get a hairnet if this was going to be a regular thing. I should have thought of that earlier.

I tilted my head at my reflection, just before I put on the balaclava. The girl in the mirror, with the pale scars on her face and her hair in a bun, didn't look like me. She looked serious, and more than a little threatening. I supposed that was appropriate. This was serious business. Then came the black balaclava and the gas mask over the top of it.

Then I had to take it off again, because I realised I'd forgotten to put on my glasses. Which completely ruined any sense of ceremony I might have been aiming for. And then I had to mess around with the straps on the mask, because it was loose and slipping down my face. I finished up by putting on the black gloves over my latex ones.

Finally, it was done. I stared at my reflection.

It was a very… monochrome look. The only bit of me that wasn't black or grey was the tiny rim of flesh visible through the eyes of the gas mask. Well, and I'd be wearing white trainers, because I didn't have any black shoes. But still. The overall impression was clear.

My… uh, well-considered choices had left me looking more than a little villainous. At least it was a classy kind of look. I couldn't have lived with myself if I was tramping around in some skanky skin tight outfit which would have left me looking like a beanpole at a fetish club. It was also a look which would make me hard to see at night, and if I just dumped the balaclava and mask, I could be a perfectly innocent person out for a late night walk. One who was fairly well-off, which would have its own benefits if I was trying to avoid suspicion.

"Beware, wrongdoers, for you are under the gaze of Panopticon!" I proclaimed to my reflection, and struck a pose. "I shall show you the horrors of the Other Place!"

It wasn't a very good pose. Or a very good speech. I was probably just going to have to stand in a corner while people who could actually pull off this kind of thing did the heroic motivational posturing. Well, that was all good for me. Posturing probably got you shot at anyway. It didn't matter that I'd somehow managed to pick a sinister costume. I wasn't jealous of those capes with powers that could actually save people in the nick of time. Not one bit.

Well, it didn't matter what I looked like. I was going out. Tonight. A bunch of girls in my year went out on a fairly regular basis, to get drunk and boast about it in the corridors. There were places that didn't care if your ID was obviously fake, and places that didn't even bother asking for one. That wasn't for me, no.

I was going out to make the world a better place.


	21. Namakarana 2-10

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 2.10**

Wrapped in the haze of my loneliness, I hiked down to a night bus stop and caught a ride down to the Docks. I'd skipped the ones closer to my house, and the driver and the mix of late-night workers and drunks paid no attention to me as I boarded, which suited me just fine.

Isolation pushed the world away from me. At one stop, a pair of women staggered on, clinging onto each other for support. For a moment, it looked like they were going to try to sit right on top of me. Then they swayed drunkenly in another direction, led seemingly at random to another pair of seats.

I could really get used to this. People ignoring me when I actually wanted them to would make school so much easier. Even better, Isolation seemed to make them ignore me even though they saw me – I wasn't actually 'invisible'. That should mean they wouldn't walk into me. I hated it when people did that at school. They didn't even have the excuse of not being able to see me.

I pressed the button to get off, and the bus pulled to a stop, even though the driver looked kind of annoyed. Pulling my gloves onto my hands, I set off along the city streets. It had started raining again while I was on the bus, leaving yellow halos around the sodium streetlights. I kept having to wipe down the lenses of my gas mask. They were as bad as glasses that way.

Two old men were fighting in an alley as I passed. They were each so bundled in thick clothing that they looked almost spherical as they pounded on each other with fat fists. I paused for a moment to examine them in the Other Place, where their problems were written right on their twisted faces. One had the same babbling schizophrenia as the preacher and Emily. The other was a mosaic of old broken glass, who wept dark foamy tears. An alcoholic, I guessed.

What could I do to help? I couldn't think of anything. I mean, I could probably try something which might make them stop fighting, but that might go wrong. And even if they stopped fighting, I couldn't really help them. I couldn't get them off the streets or get them into rehab or… or anything. I was just one person, and my power hadn't stopped those security guards from going for that skater.

God. This sucked.

Hands in my pockets, I wandered through the streets. In the Other Place, they were marked by misery and vice like graffiti. I found myself having to step around the black-red oil stains that marked deaths. Thankfully, there weren't many people about. My body tensed up whenever I saw a new stranger, even with Isolation surrounding me. This wasn't a safe place.

At last, I came to the sweatshop.

It seemed almost worse at night. The great coiling dark shapes in the sky blotted out the dim and bloody moon of the Other Place. The long shadows cast by guttering street lights hinted at the monstrosity within the building. The suggestion somehow made it worse. The stink was just as bad, and I gagged as it pierced my gas mask. Now I noticed a slow pulsing from it, which moved the air in the Other Place to force fresh waves of rot down my throat.

It was breathing. Or beating, like a heart.

I swallowed, and wished I hadn't. This might not be such a good idea. But I was all out of good ideas, and I couldn't let a place like this exist any longer. I would get it shut down. I could matter. I wasn't someone who could just be shrugged off by a principal who'd prefer to listen to girls prettier and more popular than me – at least until I forced her to _do her damn job_. I was going to be the better woman; better than her, better than any of those bitches.

So. First step was to get in. The doors were shut and probably locked, and I didn't think Isolation would be able to conceal it if I broke a window. Not that I could probably get in through the ancient, dirty, tiny windows of this old redbrick factory. I'd climbed the fire escape of another one of these buildings, but the sweatshop didn't have its lowered, and I couldn't jump that high, which was a shame because I could see that there was a fire exit on the roof. That also ruled out jumping between buildings. Maybe an athlete could have made it. I wasn't athletic.

I supposed I'd just have to lurk by the door until someone went out for a smoking break, and tailgate in. That didn't sound like fun. It was raining again, and even if my clothes were water resistant that meant I was still getting unpleasantly damp. Who knew how long I'd have to wait?

After a few minutes I got bored, and my mind started to wander. I tried the handle, but it was locked. Maybe it shut up at night. No, I could see light coming in from under the door. I tried walking a circuit of the building, but all the other doors were just as locked.

I took a breath. I was cold, wet, and I didn't want to look in the Other Place any longer than I had to. I just wanted to get up to the roof. Was that too much to ask for?

A thought struck me. My barbed wire cherubs could teleport things around. Things like books. Hell, that had been one of the first things I'd consciously and deliberately done with my power. What if I could move myself? It wasn't certain it would work. Parahuman powers often didn't make 'logical' sense from my research, like how there were people who could heal others, but not themselves. But my power was 'making things which had powers', so – much like Tinkers – I seemed to be more flexible, if I did the right thing.

So I'd probably need a different construct. Something larger. More powerful. I weighed a lot more than a book, after all. I visualised what I'd need, and exhaled, filters hissing.

The creature that formed from the dark mist was no cherub. It was a fully-fledged angel made of barbed wire. Even its rusty wings were just wire tracings in the air, though they still managed to remind me of a butterfly's. It was tall, skeletally thin, and vaguely feminine. It took after me, I guess. Kind of. Too-long arms hung down by its side, knife-like fingers nearly scraping the ground. I realised with mild unease that it had an extra joint in each of its limbs.

And, of course, it was wearing a gas mask over the wire. Had I imagined it like that? I wasn't sure.

I cleared my throat, and tried not to gag from the smell of the sweatshop. My creation tilted its head at the noise, staring with those glassy lenses. I shivered. "Take me to the roof," I ordered it, wincing at the thought. The cherubs had managed to move things without damaging them, but I was still scared.

The gas mask angel bowed its head once, and then stepped forwards, wrapping its bladed hand around mine. I screamed. I couldn't help it. I didn't want it to cut me.

Then there was just the Other Place. The Other Place I had seen through the eyes of Sniffer. No, worse. Deeper. My eyes ached, like there was nothing around me. I was blind; no eyes, no ears, no mouth or tongue or touch. I couldn't feel my clothes. I couldn't even feel where my legs were. A chill filled me to the very bones, and even worse, I wasn't sure that I had a body. I could feel everything. I could feel nothing.

I think I tried to cry out, but there was nothing. I couldn't even tell how long it lasted. The concept made no sense. There was only me, and nothing else. I was utterly alone.

Then that moment was gone, and I was back in the shallows of the Other Place, on top of the rot and filth of the sweatshop.

The angel released me, and I fell down, shedding the Other Place as I did. On all fours I hugged the cold, wet rooftop. I managed to fumble off my gas mask and roll up my balaclava before I was sick. I emptied my stomach, retching until only bile came up. The Other Place had been so cold. No, it hadn't been cold. Coldness wasn't the right way of thinking of it. It was more like heat simply hadn't existed. There had just been… nothing. No warmth. No light. No senses. No time. Nothing but me – and maybe not even all of me.

There was water on my face, and I knew it wasn't just the rain.

Panting and queasy, I pulled myself to my feet, staggering away from the steaming, chunky puddle. I just had to get my breath back. I pushed my glasses up my forehead and wiped my eyes, blinking in the rain. I spat over the edge of the roof, trying to get rid of the taste of vomit, and opened my mouth to the rain.

I was such a fuck up. God, half the things I tried with my power seemed to end with me scaring myself or making myself ill. I just wanted to make a difference. To help people. And then over and over, I got kicked in the face for it. No other cape had to go through sensory deprivation torture to get on top of a stupid _roof_.

Sniffing, I wiped my eyes, and slipped my glasses back down. The worst thing was, I knew I could easily make myself stop feeling so bad. I could turn off my fear of what I'd seen – hadn't seen. Now I knew what would happen if I called on the gas-mask angel to teleport me, I could make it... not a problem.

I just wasn't sure that I wanted to make myself into that sort of person. Into someone who didn't have a problem with what I'd been through.

I breathed and swallowed. Looking out over the ocean, I could see the radio balloon moored over the Protectorate headquarters out in the bay. It was a darker shape against the night's sky. Of course they didn't put lights on them. The network of radio balloons were what they used for tracking and navigation. Speaking of which, I could see a flight of two insectoid helicopters taking off from the launch bay, silhouetted against the sky. They were flying low over the water, and if I hadn't been already looking in that direction I'd have never seen them.

I needed to get out of sight. The last thing I needed was to be seen and for someone to draw attention to me by – like, shining a spotlight or something. Those things were meant to have on-board AI systems, high powered scanners, smart missiles - the works. And since Isolation only seemed to make people ignore me rather than making me invisible, I'd probably show up on sensors. Sure, they'd probably just ignore one person at night, but what if they could detect the use of parahuman powers? I didn't know.

God, was something happening elsewhere in the city just on the night I happened to pick for this? I really hoped not. I didn't want the police to be distracted by other things when I handed in my evidence.

I spat again, trying my best to ignore the taste in my mouth as I put my gas mask back on. This wasn't pleasant. Edging around my vomit, I approached the fire exit on the roof. When I tried the door, it was locked.

Great. Just fucking great. I was _not _getting down from here by calling on the gas mask angel again. I just couldn't. Not right now, not without any danger. The door was shut, but it was just a stupid fire exit! It'd be so easy to open it from the inside. But I was on the outside. It was like trying to open a box with the key locked inside it.

I snorted as the solution struck me. Taking a breath, I shifted to the Other Place and exhaled a static-filled television screen. The white fuzz cleared, showing me the filth-coated interior of the door. I reached through the icy cold screen, pushing my hand through the glass to touch the handle and open the door.

I shivered as I withdrew my hand through the icy membrane. That wasn't cold, was it? That was a lack of heat. They were distinct, somehow. I shouldn't think about that. Not now. I was sure I'd be having enough nightmares about the depths of the Other Place as it was.

Rubbing my hands gingerly to try to warm them up without hurting myself, I stepped into the sweatshop, and closed the door behind me. The rusty walls were filthy with dried blood, and my feet squelched on the floor. I shed the Other Place as fast as I could, and looked at the corridor with normal eyes. The first thing I noticed was a distant repetitive noise. It was muffled by my gas mask, and I couldn't identify it, but it sounded familiar. I carefully shut the fire door behind me, cocking my head to listen. The lights were dimmed, but on, and the corridor looked like an office. I guessed that made sense. The shop floor was probably where they had the workers, so they'd keep the organizational stuff up here. The paperwork, the security rotas, the delivery records, and everything else involved in running a sweatshop.

That was good. This was where the stuff I was looking for would be located. If the outside had been this bad, I didn't want to go anywhere near the shop floor.

My shoes squeaked on the tiled floor. The noise of machinery got louder. I was going to see what else was here before I started looking for evidence. The top floor was abandoned, so I took the stairs down, trying to avoid making noise. The next floor down was properly lit, and I could hear other people. I poked my head through an open doorway, into a rec room where a guy sat with his feet up on old worn green couch. He was wearing a uniform and had a radio and baton at his belt, so he was probably one of the security guards.

Lazily, the man's gaze swept across me. He didn't give any sign he'd noticed a strange, darkly dressed gas-masked figure at the door. It was a little bit creepy. I'd really wanted it to work, of course, because I would be in so much shit if it failed, but it was still weird.

My heart beating louder, I continued my exploration of this floor. I did stumble on a bathroom cubicle, and take the chance to wash out my mouth. And then I found a gantry which looked down onto the shop floor. I edged over and stared down.

The harsh fluorescent lighting was bright compared to the darker corridors I'd been sneaking through. There wasn't even the cover of darkness to hide anything. There was row after row after row of tables, each packed with sewing machines. People – they looked Asian – were sitting at each of the machines. Whenever one of them finished their current bit of clothing, one of the people walking around with baskets would take it, while other people brought fresh material.

They were working late at night. They must keep this place running 24-7, swapping out staff in shifts. They were probably bussing them in from some kind of labour compound. There were all kinds of places in the city you could keep a mass of workers. You'd just need to find an old tenement going cheap, or even an abandoned warehouse or something, and then you'd just buy it up and pack it with people.

There were men in the guard uniforms patrolling up and down. They had their batons in hand. The figures in the – I was going to call them 'watchtowers' – had shotguns, and while they weren't raised they were close to hand. Oh yes. Those guards put any idea that this was a legitimate factory to rest. You don't have people with shotguns watching over normal workers, or people with batons patrolling among them.

The entire place smelt of sweat and cloth and – I sniffed – even through the mask, there was a hot smell too. Warm plastic, maybe. From the machinery, I guessed, or… maybe some kind of glue? I could probably tell more easily if I took the gas mask off, but that would remove the point of it. I hadn't thought about how wearing this would affect my sense of smell.

Shame it didn't protect me from the reek of this building in the Other Place. I wasn't going to look at the Other Place reflection. I… I just couldn't. I didn't want to see. It was bad enough in the real world. I could almost believe I could smell it creeping through into reality. As if this place was bad enough that the Other Place was intruding on reality. I hoped it was just my imagination.

I really hoped so.

Fumbling in my pocket, I pulled out my disposable camera. I wound the film on, and took a few pictures of it. I made sure to get the guards with guns. This… I couldn't let this go on.

When I'd seen all I could bear, I turned and left. I wanted to do more. I wanted to hurt the guards. I wanted to make them suffer. I wanted to force them to see, smell, taste everything I saw, rub the pain of this place in their faces. I wanted them to dream of it, to have nightmares like I had.

It was leave, or do something rash. And there was just enough of me left that I didn't want to risk that. Not when I was going to get _all of them _thrown in jail to rot.

I was literally shaking with rage as I made my way back up to the top floor. It was a good thing I didn't come across someone on my way there, because I don't know what I would have done. It was darker and cooler above, and that seemed to damp the anger slightly. I was going to take them down. Punching people wouldn't work. And it would hurt my hands. I choked the rage down and let cold bitterness take its place.

I checked the doors until I found some kind of manager's office. It was locked, but it was the kind which could be opened from the inside. I reached through a cherub-held screen, and unlocked it, letting myself in and turning the lights on. The room was about the same size as the guards' rec room, but was better carpeted and had cheap paintings hung up on the walls. There was a desk with a computer on it, next to filing cabinets. One wall had a window, and the other one was occupied by a table and stacked chairs. I guessed this room had probably been the boss' place when this had actually been a proper factory.

The worst thing was that it was less horrible than some of the corridors. It was still a stinking, sordid mess, but in the face of the unrelenting horror of the Other Place it was marginally less horrific. Perhaps I was getting inured to it. More likely I was just so angry that I didn't have room to feel sick.

I shed the Other Place and got to hunting. There was a framed picture of a man with a woman and a child on the desk. My stomach churned, and my hands balled into fists. I forced myself to relax, because it hurt. The anger was still there, though. What does Daddy do all day? Oh, he _keeps people as slaves _so other people can have cheap clothes. How dare he put a picture of his family on his desk. How dare he treat it as just another job! How _dare_he!

I was grinning to myself as I exhaled out a barbed wire cherub. Only it wasn't a grin. Not really. It was more of a snarl. Sorry, kid, I thought to the picture. I know this is going to hurt you, but if your Dad really loved you, he wouldn't do this.

The cherub returned with the files I wanted, and I got to skim-reading. Each time I found something interesting, I took a picture of the page with the disposable camera, aware of how I was getting through the film quickly. Grind, grind, grind. Click. Grind, grind, grind. Click. Paper rustled as I turned the page. Grind, grind, grind. Click. Grind, grind, Grind. Click.

Okay, I thought to myself as I slowly worked my way through the records, taking pictures of everything that looked of interest – especially the deliveries – there _had _to be a better way of doing this than using disposable cameras. Especially since I was only getting one copy of the evidence here. I ran out of film too quickly, too.

Oh. Yes, I should get myself a polaroid camera. I could… maybe afford it? I might have to save up for a while, but that'd be perfect. I could get the pictures straight out. Of course, what would be ideal would be a digital camera, but there would be no way I could afford something like that. It was a pipe dream. In the meantime, I'd just have to build up a stock of cameras hidden in my room, and have barbed wire cherubs bring me more when I needed them. Twenty four pictures weren't enough.

I tried my best not to think of what had happened when the angel had teleported me.

When I was done, I had another barbed wire cherub put the folders back in the locked cabinet, and turned my attention to the computer. When I turned it on and waited a few minutes while it booted up, I found out that there was a password. Damn. Maybe they'd written the password down somewhere? I rooted around the desk, and found a post-it note stuck to the underside of the keyboard.

'jwinzu – 091m4 bfDkWyc93x' I read, and input the username and password. A sixteen digit alphanumeric string with special characters, written on a post-it note stuck to the bottom of the keyboard. It was almost funny.

Hell, it was funny.

I grinned as the Windows 2002 log-in screen flashed by, and then swore under my breath at the noise the machine made. I turned the screen off and waited, but no one came to poke their heads in. It was lucky that this top floor was mostly empty. Cautiously I turned the screen back on, and started browsing, my mask lit by the monitor. Documents… okay, lots of documents. All in folders named things like "Accounts" and "Orders" and "Shipping" and "Staff". Oh, and something which was labelled ' ', but seemed to be a folder. I wondered what was in there.

Oh. A folder of porn on a work computer. Blushing, I checked if it was… like, something really bad, but no, it seemed to just be vapid blondes with breasts the size of their heads kissing each other. Charming. I closed that with a shudder.

But apart from that, I thought checking the other folders, I'd hit the jackpot. Spreadsheets. Documents. Instructions. Contracts. How could I get them off this computer? I could steal the computer, I guessed, but that'd tell them it was missing. Plus, it might raise suspicions if Dad found a computer tower in my room.

Urgh. Why hadn't I thought to pack some floppy discs in my superheroing kit? Oh yes, because I hadn't thought I'd ever need them. Well, that was going to change in the future.

Email. Yes. I could zip up the files and then set them as attachments. I set the computer compressing the files I wanted, and followed the cables back to find the modem. I turned it on, and then connected the internet. The electronic noises were very loud in the silence and I was scared someone had heard it, but no one came. After I'd zipped up each file, I uploaded it to a discardable email address I registered. I could go grab the files on a floppy on a library computer or something. It was painfully slow going, though.

I was just starting on uploading the "Staff" file when the lights outside the room turned on. "Shit," I breathed to myself. "Cancel, cancel, cancel." I turned the screen off, pulled out the modem cable and listened for the sound of footsteps. There were two – maybe more? – people coming closer, their feet echoing on the tiled floor. I hit the power switch, and looked around desperately. Where could I hide? Under the table pushed up against the wall next to the stacked chairs? Good enough. Sure, _maybe _Isolation would work, but I wasn't going to risk it. After all, I'm pretty sure there's nothing in the superhero's rules which say you can't hide as _well _as use Stranger powers.

And fuck, I realised. The lights had been off when I'd come in. And it was too late to turn them off because they were just outside the door and… I tried to keep quiet and control my breathing.

"The lights are on," I heard. "Did you leave them on?"

"I… didn't think so," another man replied. "But… hmm. I can't remember." A key scraped at the lock, eventually managing to open the door. Three men walked in. One of them I'd seen in the pictures on the desk, although he was just wearing a t-shirt and jeans and looked decidedly tired. His brown hair was lank and he had bags under his eyes. It was past midnight after all. One of them was just big – muscular as well as fat – and wearing a balaclava. The other, however… well, I couldn't see his eyes. Or his hair. Because he was wearing a blank theatrical mask over the top of a balaclava not too different from mine.

A cape. Probably a villain. This was a sweatshop and he didn't seem to be arresting the manager. I was already trying not to make any noise, but I tried even harder. A parahuman might have a power which could find me, which meant I might have to rely on not being noticed mundanely.

"Check the window," the cape told the big guy.

"Locked," the thug said. He was wearing big heavy boots which were splattered with mud. They looked like they were military-made. "Doesn't look like it's been opened. And," he rattled the handle, "not broken or nothing."

It wasn't broken or _anything_, I thought to myself irritably. I knew this wasn't the time, but… dammit, Mum was an English lecturer and certain habits got set at a young age. Just like how I wrote texts and emails _properly_, thanks very much.

"Oh, thank goodness," the manager said, shaking his head. "I was worried you might have found a break-in, Mister Watchful. When you get a call when you're in bed from your PSC… well, I…"

"Shut up." The masked man sniffed, his head scanning the room. His shoes clicked on the floor as he paced back and forth, interspersed by sniffs. Click, click, click. Sniff. Click, click click. His eyes lingered on the table for a moment. "I can feel something," he said. "There is a danger. Something is threatening you, Mr. Welbret. Something close by. There's…" his head scanned from left to right, "… something." He was sweeping the room, and his gaze was settling more and more on the table. "Vague. But real."

He sniffed again. My heart almost stopped. The gas mask was fogging up as I hyperventilated, and my breaths were loud in my ears. Shit. Shit. This must be some kind of… of precog or 'danger-seer' or something like that. And the manager had mentioned PSC, a private security contractor. Or 'Pinkerton Stupid Cunts', as my dad called them when he didn't think I was in earshot range. You try being the daughter of a union leader; then you'll hear all about PSCs. They were muscle for rent. Tended to hire a lot of people straight out of the military, and they were part of the 'business community'. And some of them had parahumans working for them. No wonder a place like this could keep going if they were hiring someone with a danger sense.

I slipped into the Other Place. The manager was a grey, dull corpse with hands coated in dried blood, while the thug was a beast-man hybrid with unreadable writing covering his shirt. But it was the cape who drew my attention. The man's mask was twisted into a wide-eyed theatrical grimace, and eyes bubbled over the surface of his skin.

It wasn't the man I was looking at.

From his head, delicate fronds of light waved and trembled. They reminded me of ferns, in how they branched and coiled. Or maybe they were like some kind of creature which lived in coral. They were certainly mobile in a way plants weren't, because their movements were not random. They were sweeping back and forth.

They were so delicate and beautiful and… and they were everything the Other Place wasn't. I don't know how else to describe it. Where everything else was dark and dirty and stank, they were pure and bright and beautiful. They felt good. I could sit here, hiding under a table, afraid that I'd be caught and killed – or worse – and watch them all day. They made such pretty pictures in the air as they caressed the ceiling and the walls and the floor and the computer.

They didn't come near me, though. No. They didn't like me. Or maybe they didn't like Isolation. When one frond drifted too close, the razor-edged rusty butterflies that made up the flight of Isolation went for them. Diaphanous light met corroded iron, and iron won.

It… it didn't feel good to know my power was doing that to something so beautiful. There was enough left of me that I realised this had to be how his power looked for things, but it was so beautiful I almost didn't care. For so long I'd only seen horror and ugliness in the Other Place and now I had something worthwhile for the first time. Something I actually wanted to see. Just staring at his power when he was doing things felt _good_. Really, really, really good. And it wasn't his power doing it, because I felt it even as Isolation cut the ribbons of light. They never got to touch me. This feeling was coming from inside me.

Their words were a blur. I could hear them, yes, but I wasn't paying any attention. I didn't care I was in the Other Place, surrounded by the stench of gore and worse. I was too focussed on watching the soft tendrils of light playing all around the place. I could see how they moved, how they swept, and there was something about them I could almost, achingly, nearly understand. I got that the far-less-important men were talking about security and there was probably something about contacting him if they had any break-ins, but I just wasn't paying attention.

Here was all the beauty, all the grace, everything good that the Other Place normally lacked. I felt… dirty and unclean by contrast. All my power did was to make monsters and show me horrid things.

It hurt to pull myself away from the light. It made my hands ache, and reminded me of all the little pains of normal life. I just knew I needed to get out of here before they started searching the room properly. I couldn't stay here. Shouldn't.

I closed my eyes, and imagined the gas-mask angel again. I could feel myself start to shake. I knew what was coming. Especially after seeing something so beautiful, I didn't want to go through… through that again. But I had to.

I exhaled, and it was there, staring down at me. The tendrils of light avoided it. Didn't want to go near it. I wasn't surprised – nor did I. First I needed line of sight. I crawled out from under the table when no one seemed to be looking in my direction, and bolted for the window.

The manager was in my way. I didn't care. I might have been skinny and built like a stick, but he didn't expect me at all. I barged past him, sending him sprawling, and the words "What the f-" were just about leaving the mouth of one of the others when I reached the window. I could see the rain-soaked sidewalk outside, on the other side of the street.

'Take me there,' I thought at the gas-mask angel, desperately.

Then there was just the nothingness again. I was screaming. I was sure of it. Even if there was no sound, I was stuck in an eternal infinitesimal, observing with nothing to observe.

I landed down on the pavement, and nearly collapsed. I staggered over to the nearest streetlight and clung onto it, breathing deeply and trying not to retch. I'd bitten my tongue and the taste of hot copper filled my mouth. My fingers were throbbing like I'd just reopened every wound on them, and I had a stomach cramp. I waited just long enough that I could stand, and staggered off down the street again. I shouldn't stay around here. Even if I might have the chance to see that power again.

My tears painted halos around the lights.

I found a bus stop a few blocks away, and sat there, wrapped in Isolation, trying not to throw up. There was an old drunk who came down and sat at the other end of the bench, but he never even looked in my direction. When a night bus showed up, I went to sit at the back, away from the drunks and druggies. I took off my balaclava and my gas mask, and curled up into a ball, head resting on my forearms.

I had my evidence. Some of it. I hadn't gotten all the stuff from the computer, but… but I had my photos and some files on that email account. And I felt like shit and my tongue was bleeding and from the sticky warmth under my gloves my hands were in an even worse state. I was shaking and my eyes were watery.

The lights outside passed in a haze as the bus crawled along, rain pattering off its roof. One collection of noisy drunks got on. Another got off.

God. What the fuck was wrong with me? Why was my power so… so _sordid_? Why did it hurt me? Why… why couldn't I have _anything _nice? I knew, deep in my gut, that I'd get the same rush from other parahumans. I knew it. I almost didn't want to go to bed. If I went out again, maybe I'd find another parahuman on the streets. I could watch them. See how their power worked. How beautiful it was, compared to mine. I could just sit there and watch and feel the comforting warmth wash over me. Wash away the pain of my aches and my bleeding and the cramps and… and everything in my life.

Because it had felt good. Really good. Really, _really _good.

The classic comparison would be to say that it felt better than sex, but… uh, I kind of didn't have a baseline for observations there. If I was going to compare it to things I'd actually experienced, I'd say it felt as good as the painkillers they'd had me on in hospital. No, it felt _better _, because it didn't come with the wooziness, and there was a more wholesome feel to it. Sort of like the feeling you get when you eat chocolate.

So watching parahuman powers in the Other Place felt like a mix of opiates and chocolate. It would probably be more pithy to say something like 'chocolate-coated heroin', except I was pretty sure you couldn't actually coat heroin in chocolate, because wasn't it like a liquid? I suppose you could… like, inject heroin into the centre of a soft-centred bit of candy. The same way you get that gross orange goop in them..

I shook the wanderings from my head. The point was that it felt _amazing_. I wanted to do it again. I… I needed it.

I pursed my lips, tasting blood. No. I needed rest. Real rest, not just forcing Cry Baby away from me. I was tired and emotional. It was the stress getting to me. It would be silly to go running off again tonight. I needed to sleep. I'd nearly been caught anyway. I'd sleep and then write up my letter to the Protectorate and send them the evidence. After all, there were parahuman criminals involved in this, right? It made sense to send it to them!

And with a little spying, I could find out when they were going to raid the place – they'd have to raid it, there was no way they could ignore it – and tag along under Isolation. Then I could see what they did. Watch real heroes in action. See their powers.

I'd make sure they'd do the right thing, of course. And I could help them from the shadows. I wasn't a fighter, but I was good at noticing things and… and I could probably find a way to warn them without having to talk to them. Like having a barbed wire cherub carry notes to them or something.

I wiped my nose on my coat and polished my glasses. I'd made a mess of my first outing as a secret hero, hadn't I? Well, maybe not a complete mess. I'd got some of the evidence I wanted. I could still get that place shut down. I hoped. But late at night, when I was hurting like this, inside and out, and I'd been through… through That Place, right in the depths of the Other Place – well, I was feeling weepy. Maybe I'd feel better when I wrote-up the full message I was going to give to the Protectorate and signed it from 'Panopticon'. Although, urgh. I wasn't looking forwards to having to write my covering letter.

Smiling weakly, I tried to think of the story I'd have to tell Dad. Maybe I should reconsider the whole journalism thing. My job would writing essays if I did that – because I certainly wasn't news anchor material – which would _basically _be a kind of living hell.

And whoever heard of a cape who was secretly a journalist?

* * *

…

* * *

Yes, that was a joke. I do know about Superman. We watched the film from the seventies in Parahuman Studies.


	22. Namakarana 2-0x: The Chariot

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Namakarana 2.x**

**The Chariot**

The eastern horizon was painted a dull grey, an industrial shade that slowly brightened as the minutes stretched on. Dawn was coming, and the urban blight of the rusting Brockton Bay docklands sprawled out under an iron sky.

"This is Charlie Niner and we are holding station above the target site."

It wasn't raining. For the police in position around a certain warehouse in the Docks, that was a blessing, but only a small one. Even without rain, the cold nipped at exposed flesh and turned breath into bursts of fog, lit orange by the street lights.

"Roger, Charlie Niner. We have confirmation Charlie One is reading your feed loud and clear. No problems at our end."

Those with sharp ears might have heard the faint whir of the insectoid PPD chopper holding station over the site, but only if they could pick it out from the noise of the waking city. Even then, unless the listener was looking in just right patch of sky with eyes sharp enough to notice a covert vehicle packed with sensor equipment, they would probably just dismiss it as another vaguely electrical hum.

"Understood, Charlie Actual. Visibility isn't great in the optical, but thermal, t-hertz and radar are compensating. Drones are on station and we're awaiting your orders."

Flitting mechanical beetles the size of a man's torso hung up in the night air, whining like oversized mosquitos. Their grey-black flight surfaces were speckled with LEDs, camouflaging them with light. It wouldn't do to be a darker shape against the sky. Most were just carrying more sensor equipment, but a few of them were armed with a single strike missile, the lone sting of a particularly explosive bee.

"Roger, Charlie Niner. Keep your eyes open and look for papa-whiskey signals. Strike Team One is in position and green to go if local forces request it. Charlie Actual out."

And then there was the police van, painted in the same colours as any other. A suspicious observer might note that it was sitting heavy on its wheels, though, and deduce that it was a fully loaded armoured van.

All this force, and all they could do was wait. Wait for a call from the local police which might never come. The PPD was only here as backup in case the tip-off of an on-site parahuman was true. It was up to the police to request a deployment of field units.

And the call came.

* * *

…

* * *

Three hours had passed, and it was all over for the Parahuman Protection Division's combat team involvement in the case. All over, that was, apart from a considerable amount of paperwork, and the necessary briefings to one's superiors.

"It was a false alarm?" Director Emily Piggot of the East-North-East branch of the Parahuman Protection Division asked. She reached up and massaged her temples. The servomotors in her black plastic-coated left arm softly whined with the motion, her fingers remaining unmoving through the gesture. She was a stocky blonde woman with a physique which once had been raw muscle, but had long since gone to seed. Half-turning to her slim LCD monitor, she checked the preliminary incident report from the police. "They're saying it's possible the suspect fled." The whine changed in pitch as she reached out, frowning, and closed her mechanical fingers on her coffee mug.

The woman on the other side of the desk shook her head. "No," Hannah – who went by the codename 'Miss Militia' – said. Her dark eyes were alert and professional. It was impossible to tell that the slight woman dressed in the sweat-stained power armour undersuit hadn't slept last night. She seemed disgustingly awake and energetic. "There was no-one on site for the call-in location. Charlie-Niner agrees with my assessment. Barring a teleporter, no one fled the location without being tracked, and they didn't pick up any unusual energy signatures."

Miss Militia looked over at the flatscreen on one of the pale blue walls, showing photographs of the most prominent supervillains in Region I East North East, and clicked her tongue. "And fleeing from the police wouldn't be in character for either of the local confirmed villain teleporters," she added, tapping her feet on the royal blue carpet.

Piggot nodded solidly. "That is true," she agreed. "Although… well, we'll get onto that later." She rose, and limped over to the nanotube reinforced window of her office, each swing of her left leg accompanied by the whine of mechanisms. From here, she could look back toward Brockton Bay over the choppy water which separated the mainland from the local Parahuman Protection Division headquarters, once a converted oil rig. A lone container ship sat at the docks, a rust-red vessel being unloaded even now. "Can you confirm it was an Alpha-Two-One-Nine they reported?" she asked. Every deployment of a combat PRT had to be justified.

"Yes, Director."

"You carried out a full search?"

"We swept the area on foot, and Charlie-Niner was watching. Thermals, t-ray… nothing." Hannah shrugged. "I'm almost certain it was a false alarm. The cops said they'd just got this feeling of… how did they put it? 'Coldness and humidity and a strange smell', so given we had info there was a para possibly on site…" she shook her head. "I'm thinking it was a dehumidifying room that got the cops nervous."

"At least _we _should be clean on this incident's write-up," Piggot said, resting her hands on the bright metal of the window frame. "You didn't leave the vehicle until requested?"

"Yes, Director," Miss Militia confirmed again. Her voice had a slightly weary note to it. "Charlie-Niner was providing aerial intel as per your orders, but Charlie Team didn't leave the APC until the Two-One-Nine was called in and we had authorisation."

"Good." Piggot paused, turning and looking away from the window. "Anything else to report?" she asked more intently, now the formulaic questions were out of the way.

Miss Militia coughed. "It's going to be an issue. What we found. I mean, this is going to set the pot boiling when it goes public," she said awkwardly. "The workers in here? Japanese. Illegal immigrants, looks like. Shipped in as slave labour. They'd been beaten," she said, her tone disgusted. "One of them threw herself at me – recognised my armour. She was going on about how the gangmasters had killed some men who'd tried to escape. 'Help, help, Miss Milita, help', she kept saying." She narrowed her eyes. "This shouldn't be brushed under the carpet. This isn't how America should be treating refugees," she said, anger in her voice.

Piggot didn't let any of her emotions show. "It's in the hands of the police, now," she said. "As far as I can tell, the whole operation looks like it's a local thing – no obvious links to any parahuman organisations apart from the tip-off. We'll just need to add this to our investigation into PSC parahumans –did you see any evidence of private security contractors on site?"

Miss Militia clenched her jaw, and then sighed. "No. And I understand, Director. It's just…"

"I'm not happy either," Piggot said, "but we don't have jurisdiction there. And we unfortunately have our hands full. The Bomei are going to take this as an excuse when they find out about it. We're going to have to prepare for whatever reprisals they carry out. Even if they were only going to go after the guilty – and they're not – they can't be allowed to… to do what they do." She scowled. "This timing is very bad. Things were quietening down, but they're still worked up from the last riots."

"I understand."

"I'll schedule an action plan meeting for the Region I Response Team tomorrow," Piggot said, returning to her desk and sitting back down. "This time we will be properly ready if the Bomei make trouble. I'll increase our readiness level in case it leaks early. We know they have spies in the police. I hope I won't have to move more PRTs in from the rest of the area, but if this is going to go loud…" she shook her head. "Moving on."

Hannah cleared her throat, shifting on her blue-cushioned seat. "Yes. With regards to the other reason for my onsite presence…"

"Yes. The analysts are looking over the data from Watcher-2 right now," Piggot said. She paused. "That will be all."

Miss Militia stretched, working her shoulders. She rose. "Is Colin in?" she asked, rubbing her wrists together. "I need him to take a look at my armour again."

"Oh?" Piggot said, raising her eyebrows in mild annoyance. Miss Militia's power armour seemed… well, she didn't like to say 'cursed', but whenever there was a problem with gear in the field, hers seemed to be the one playing up more often than not. Piggot suspected that there was something about her powers at the root, but so far no one had been able to get to the bottom of the problem – if it even was a problem, rather than just bad luck, as some of the technicians had suggested. She disagreed. It was much more likely that something about the other woman's capacity to pull weapons from nowhere and move like a Hong Kong action hero made the armour prone to breaking down. "He was in at five this morning. And," she glanced at a window on her second monitor, "he's in the building. What is it this time?"

"Battery's running hot," Miss Militia said, shaking her head. "Useless piece of junk. I preferred my old rig." She smiled faintly. "Don't worry. I won't let Colin know what I think of it. He'd probably have a heart attack at the idea that I'd prefer to not be wearing power armour."

"I would prefer that he remain alive and not in a state of shock, yes," Piggot said drily.

"Time to get out of this undersuit, showered, back into my proper uniform and then I can start the incident report write-up," Hannah said. "Unless you have anything you need done first."

"I'll schedule the meeting for the ENE response team leads," Piggot said, "and you'll need to be there. I'll message you if anything else comes up."

"Got it."

* * *

…

* * *

Alone once again in her office, Director Piggot sighed, staring blankly at her sleeping security screen. Another problem in a city – hell, a country – full of them. Another problem on her desk. And she'd need to handle this, because Miss Militia was… sensitive about any mistreatment of immigrants and the last thing she needed was one of her actually _reliable _parahumans getting disillusioned if some idiot prosecutor decided not to pursue the case. She went to bring her computer out of sleep mode, and winced.

Rolling her sleeve up to the shoulder, she rubbed the flesh of her upper arm where it met the black outer coating of her artificial arm. The humidity combined with the cold weather was making her stumps ache. She tried not to show it in front of her subordinates, but she hated winters in Brockton Bay, and the weather was still miserable. She couldn't wait for spring to properly arrive. Opening one of her desk drawers, she pulled out a foil packet, and popped one of the pills, swallowing it whole. That should do some good.

Getting back to work, Piggot checked her inbox. There was another email from the Army, requesting that she examine the current on-staff parahumans in her region and consider if any wanted the opportunity of serving their country and protecting national interests and energy supplies abroad.

That went straight into her Low Priority folder. None of her fully trained adult parahumans were people she could spare, and much as she _wanted _to dump a certain troublesome Ward on the occupation forces in Venezuela and make her their problem, she couldn't do that. The Army wouldn't take Wards. A pity. She'd send back her form letter once she'd given them some time to think she was actually checking her records.

Reports, reports, reports. That was what made up her days, and she got to work on trying to clear her backlog even as the painkillers for her arm and leg kicked in. The summary of forwarded minutes from Deputy Director Harrison in Vermont were filed to be handled later. There was a notification of a planned delay in the raids against criminal organisations thought to be linked to Hemlock in Manchester. Deputy Director Jones was handling that. That damn villain had operations all over New Hampshire, but it was proving very difficult to build a case against him – not helped by the murder of their FBI liaison in what had almost certainly been a spoiler attack against evidence. And another reminder about the interviews she would have to carry out to find someone new to handle Massachusetts. Boston, Endbringer-blasted and half-abandoned, was a perpetual pain in her neck and her former Deputy Director had quit.

Piggot narrowed her eyes. Ah, yes. There was Elmthorpe's report on the tip-off which had produced the most recent problem to cross her desk. While she was in theory all in favour of tip-offs, she was not in favour of tip-offs which caused more trouble in a volatile city, and double-not-so when she knew for a fact that the local police chief was sympathetic to the Patriotic Movement. He was itching to be able to get a nice public victory over someone 'taking jobs away from honest hardworking Americans'.

Why did they have to be Japanese? Intellectually, Piggot knew why. The Leviathan's rampage across that island nation had sent migrants fleeing across the world, and the refugees certainly weren't headed for the PRC or the UPRK if they could help it. But that meant that there were large communities of totally unintegrated first generation migrants all across the US who owed no loyalty to America, and in the vacant spaces of society ethnic gangs – like the fucking Bomei – had found an almost state-like role. They ran grey markets, they sold drugs, they smuggled migrants into the US for debts, they offered loan shark services, and they talked about how they were preserving culture and traditions. And, of course, they shot people who 'disrespected' them.

The Bomei just happened to be the local wing of the latest version of the ethnic mobs which always cropped up whenever a large influx of migrants arrived.

It wasn't the Bomei who really worried her. Yes, they were led by a dangerous bastard, but the man who called himself Lung was playing from the same handbook as the Mafia and all the other ethnic mobs had. He was just doing it with parahuman power backing him. They'd get him eventually, when he slipped up and did something stupid enough to let her bring in a proper reinforced assault PRT to smash him and his organisation. The FBI were already working on the network of businesses the Bomei owned or influenced, and they were building a case against him, slowly and surely.

She swirled the dregs in her nearly empty mug of coffee, and downed it.

No, someone had set up this conflict. Someone had tipped them off about a sweatshop filled with Japanese workers, in a city with a powerful ethnic crime presence and a police chief who wanted to be seen cracking down on migrants and those who employed them.

Eyes narrowed, Director Piggot read the analysis which Elmthorpe had got back from the labs. Fingerprints all over the paper, from lots of people – the labs said it was hopelessly contaminated, and had probably been taken from some communal source of paper in an office. That was supported the paper – cheap A4 – and the ink, which was from the kind of commercial printer a small business might have.

Nothing useful for tracking this person down. Emily Piggot personally blamed films and books for teaching criminals to wear gloves and not use their own paper for sending this kind of message. It made everything so much harder. Irritably, she glanced over the scan of the note again.

'Director Emily Piggot," the message read.

'As part of Operation Salesman, Project Crucible has authorised Mockingbird Team to begin operations in Brockton Bay. I have obtained evidence on an illegal parahuman-supported sweatshop operating in the Docks. Information is attached to this cover letter. We are sure that action will be taken out to shut down this criminal organisation.

'We wish you best luck in your efforts, and look forwards to providing more assistance as and when it is appropriate.

'Yours sincerely,

'Panopticon  
'Mockingbird Team  
'Project Crucible'

A strange symbol was marked beneath, like a hieroglyphic signature. It looked like a tic-tac-toe grid turned forty-five degrees, with an eye in the middle. She could see the pixilation on the diagonal lines – the resolution of the source image was quite poor.

As far as she'd been able to tell, there was no such thing as 'Project Crucible'. So she was operating under the irritated assumption that this was probably a group of vigilante rogues who wanted to pretend they were part of some great government conspiracy or secret superhero team. They might even believe it. This wouldn't be the first rogue team recruited by some villain under the pretence of being a secret conspiracy.

And she had her suspicions. A deniable and anonymous tip-off from a source she'd never heard of before had all the marks of a set-up. Someone wanted the Bomei to go on a rampage. She suspected this 'Panopticon' had Patriotic sympathies – or was being used by someone who had them. Unless it was linked to the Coil… but no, she wasn't going to give too much credit to the over-extrapolated projections of cognitively-enhanced FBI parahumans until they gave her something concrete.

She'd just throw the data over to them, and see what they said. Yes, there did seem to be suspicious links between several major industries and private security contractors, but – Piggot considered wryly – it was far more likely they were using them as hired thugs for good, honest all-American activities. Like union-breaking and carrying out industrial espionage. Which was illegal, but not her problem as long as parahumans weren't involved.

But she wasn't prepared to credit wild extrapolations from too little data, even if they came from parahumans. Especially if they came from parahumans, who had a pronounced tendency to give false positives in their warnings.

Director Piggot massaged her brow, muttering to herself. An impressive budget was allocated to analyzing the various factors contributing to the manifestation of powers. Genetic mapping, demographic studies, psychological profiles. If they asked, she'd be happy to add a common profile to the catalogue; "stupid little self-righteous fools who think that 'good intentions' makes up for being saps for whatever subversive influence glances their way." Hopefully it was just vigilantes this time. She made a note to have someone brief the Wards about it. Such influences often targeted younger, less well-informed parahumans and their hangers-on with the promise of _mattering_.

Little idiots.

She sighed and got back to work. There was a new message, on the secure mail client. It was marked with 'Urgent', and came directly from Belle Torony, the Secretary of Homeland Security. This was coming right from the top, above even Director Costa-Brown. The Parahuman Protection Division was only part of the larger DHS.

Director Piggot pinched her brow. If it was coming from the Secretary, this might make it political. She really hoped that it wasn't. With the recent events in the East North East, she didn't have the best record. Piggot opened it immediately. It was brief, almost perfunctory.

'Director Emily Piggot,' it read.

'Please be advised, a DHS team operating under the auspices of IRONWALL led by AGENT JANE BAKER will be beginning operations in REGION I EAST NORTH EAST. They are dealing with a possible ORANGE-RED threat and you are to offer them full cooperation.

'They will be arriving at ENE COMMAND to brief you further. Please see them at your earliest convenience.

'Belle Torony  
'Secretary for Homeland Security'

Please see them at your earliest convenience. Piggot smiled, her lips a humourless line. Yes, that was a direct order there. And a potential threat investigating the second-highest threat categorisation – only one step below an Endbringer?

What was going on here?

* * *

...

* * *

The black helicopter silently descended, the sound of its rotors almost lost in the thrum of machinery from the PPD base and the falling rain. There were troopers up here, armed and ready in case of trouble. This would not be the first time parahuman terrorists intercepted an arrival – although the DHS helicopter was probably advanced enough to fight off all but the most determined assailants. It looked even more insectoid than the standard designs, with a bulbous transport abdomen, two large sensor bulges on its opaque blacked-out front, and smaller bulges which no doubt held foldout weapons systems.

Their base sensors had only picked it up when it had requested permission to land and deployed its landing gear.

Piggot's lip curled up from where she was watching, out of the rain. Tinkertech. You didn't get that kind of performance from hardware which wasn't made by some mad genius in a lab. Only a subset of mad geniuses, too.

Standing next to her, the senior parahuman under her command made an appreciative noise. "Very nice," Armsmaster observed. His high-end self-made power armour whined as he tilted his head. "Full radar stealth, mounted for optic as well, and it's got ultra-low thermal emissions. Looks like some of Cavalcade's work."

They stood in silence for a moment, waiting for it to finish its descent.

"You were in early today," Piggot observed.

"I left something annealing overnight, and I need to check on it. It's for that refit of the observation craft you ordered." He trailed off, switching to another topic. "Miss Militia says her armour's having heating problems again."

"Yes." Armsmaster liked talking about his work, and Piggot was prepared to humour him.

"She says it's hot and uncomfortable. Not so bad when she's not moving about, but that design of battery is prone to overheating, especially when you're as mobile as she is. Not my work. It's a flaw for the 'fab design," the man said bluntly. "I can't do much about that without going 'tech; LiBs run hot. At least at the energy density needed for the armour. Not my fault. If you want me to fix it, we'll have to either strip down her armour for less weight and less protection, or go 'tech for a new battery or a cooling system."

Piggot pursed her lips. "Lower priority," she decided, as the sea wind blew through her hair, carrying a scent of salt with it. "See if you can save some weight, but she's willing to downgrade to non-powered armour if it can't be fixed."

"Understood." And he did understand. For a parahuman, Armsmaster was reliable and stable. He shifted. His armour was more silent than her arm and leg, despite its bulk. "How was the deployment? Any technical problems with the squad's equipment?"

"No. Apart from the problem Miss Militia's having, she says their gear worked to spec."

"Good." She suspected he was smirking under the armour. The conversation was brought to a halt, though, as the chopper finally descended to the point that they would have to raise their voices to be heard, even over the muffled rotor.

A man and a woman stepped out of the cargo abdomen, onto the damp concrete of the helicopter pad. They raised their umbrellas in unison. The government agents were dressed in matching black suits, and wore mirrored sunglasses despite the greyness of the day. They looked around, and saw Piggot and Armsmaster. Their shiny black shoes clicked on the hard surface, as they took a path which avoided the puddles on the black concrete.

"Director Piggot," the woman said in a monotone. She was red-haired, though traces at her roots suggested she might have naturally been blonde. She glanced at Armsmaster's armoured bulk. "Armsmaster."

"Welcome," Piggot said, offering her mechanical hand. Behind them, the ground crews were already at work moving the DHS helicopter into the hanger, out of sight from watchful eyes back in Brockton Bay. "Agent Baker, yes?"

The pale-skinned woman shook it, and gave her an awkward smile. "Greetings, Director Piggot," she said. She had an unidentifiable trace of an accent. "I am Agent Jane Baker. With me is Agent John Butcher," she gestured towards the man, "and we are with the Department for Homeland Security. We understand that this is on short notice, and we wish to thank you for making time in your schedule for us." The two agents folded up their umbrellas, now that they were out of the rain.

"I do not think it was necessary to meet us in person on the landing pad," Agent Butcher observed, in the same faint accent. He was clean shaven, and his brown hair was cropped short. He glanced back towards Brockton Bay. "I do not feel this is a secure meeting place."

Piggot nodded. "This way," she said. "I've already got the secure meeting rooms prepared."

Agent Baker raised her hand. "Alone, please. Mr Armsmaster does not have the clearance for this… briefing."

Even through the armour, Piggot could read the surprise in the other man's posture, and an edge of offence. "I understand," Armsmaster said stiffly.

"We will wish to meet with you separately," Agent Baker said. "We believe your particular, ah, talents may be of use."

"And we may require the aid of your heavy element, should this scenario escalate," Agent Butcher added. "This is a concern, which we will brief you on at the time."

That seemed to mollify him slightly. Slightly.

"Please, lead on, Director Piggot," Agent Baker said, gesturing towards the door. "It is cold and wet out here."

Piggot led them down into the heart of the base, through security cordons and fingerprint scanners and retinal analysis and what felt like a thousand other checks. It was warm in the secure rooms, the waste heat from the computing banks bleeding out regardless of their best effort to keep them cool. The two agents' suits had dried instantly with no crumpling or creasing, a sign that they were made of tinkerfab fabric.

Piggot paused before the final door, hand resting on its black surface. She tilted her head. There was something about these two which were vaguely familiar, especially the man. "I think I've met you before," she told Agent Butcher, as she waited for the sensors to verify the identities of the three people in the corridor.

The man adjusted his mirrorshades. He was still wearing them inside, as was the other agent. "I interviewed some of the survivors from the Ellisberg Incident in the preparation for the summary report," he said. "I did not interview you in person."

The door chimed, and the light on the lock turned green. "That was probably it," Emily Piggot said, keeping her voice level. The room inside was cooler than the corridors, and lit only by the blue glow of the LCD screens within. She reached for the dimmer switch on the inside of the door, bringing the lights up to full power. So he'd been part of the cover-up and clean-up crew for that, had he? Her lips twitched. Well, time to see what bad news they were bringing. She stiffly made her way to a seat and sat heavily, rubbing her aching thigh where the meat met the metal.

Agent Baker set up her laptop, linking it to the projector, while Agent Butcher swept the room for listening devices. It was slightly insulting that they didn't trust her security. Such paranoia was common among the covert operatives and wetwork teams of the Department for Homeland Security and its various subordinate divisions. The PPD handled parahumans, FEMA led the containment and sterilisation of sites attacked by Endbringers and similar disasters, and so on. Still, she would have hoped that they'd not expect one of their own to have forgotten her training, even if she wasn't in the field anymore.

"I must make clear the severity of this case quite clear," Agent Baker said, finally. The light from the projector reflected off her glasses, painting tiny versions of the display over her eyes. "The public release of information would be… adverse."

"Indeed, the knowledge itself may be dangerous," Agent Butcher interjected.

"Thank you, Agent Butcher. Yes. The knowledge itself may be dangerous. I shall now provide some context. There has been an outbreak of the Slaughterhouse in Canada."

Piggot inhaled sharply. "You're certain?" she whispered, voice barely audible over the hum of the digital projector. Under the light of the projector, she looked even more wan and pale than the DHS agents.

"Yes," the other woman said in her monotone. "Multiple vectors of harmful information have been isolated and destroyed already. We must keep this news under control. If the news escapes, there will be panic. There is already panic in certain Canadian cities. It is spreading."

"Possibly extending into Region I, the PPD East North East," the man added.

"Yes, Agent Butcher. Region I. There has been an… incident at the Canadian border, and our liaisons in the Royal Canadian Parahuman Regulation Bureau have informed us that they believe at least one carrier of infectious materials has crossed the border into Vermont. This has the potential to spread the…" she paused. "What would you call it?"

"I would call it a 'disease'," Agent Butcher said, a slight note of agitation entering his voice for the first time. "I would call it a 'malady'. I would call it a 'contagion'. A sickness of the mind which leads to… ah, improper thought and action. And this improper thought is caused by improper knowledge. Yes. It is a plague. A plague of unwanted and unwarranted thoughts."

"Well, let us call it a 'contagion'," Agent Baker said, her tongue snapping around the unseen inverted commas. "This is, of course, severe. I do not need to remind you of the effects of the Slaughterhouse 'contagion'. Madness and incorrect action in previously sane parahumans, the triggering of previously unaffected humans who are exposed to the incorrect ideas in infectious materials, and so on. This cannot be tolerated."

Piggot let out a great sigh. No wonder things were being treated like this. Only a few dangers merited this security classification, and the infectious parahuman madness-idea of the Slaughterhouse was one of them. "How many possible living vectors are we looking at?" she asked.

"One seems near probable," Agent Baker said, adjusting her mirrorshades. "The RCPRB report that they have eliminated another one close to the US border, so it is possible more may have fled. We cannot let these harmful ideas penetrate the United States – but I fear they have already done so." She sat. "One of the new submissions to the central PPD icon database has raised… concern."

"Significant concern," Agent Butcher said, folding his hands on the table. His nails, Piggot noticed irrationally, were very cleanly cut, apart from the one on the little finger of his left hand which seemed to be missing entirely.

"Yes, thank you Agent Butcher. Significant concern." Agent Baker opened a new file on her computer. Up on the projector, the scanned image from Pantopticon's letter. The rotated tic-tac-toe grid, with the eye in the central grid and the other eight boxes empty.

One box filled with an eye, out of nine.

Director Piggot blinked. She pinched her brow. "The number nine," she muttered. "Oh… damn. I missed that. One of the recurring themes in Slaughterhouse iconography."

Agent Baker leaned forwards, her hair falling in front of her glasses with the motion. "That is understandable, Director," she said softly. "But we will require your cooperation to stop this spreading. We are already in contact with the FCC and so the necessary media cut-outs are in place. We cannot let a possible Slaughterhouse vector access media sources. Such… incorrect thoughts must be contained. It may be unrelated. Other people can use nines. But we cannot take the risk."

"Symbols are the key to the human mind. Symbols and patterns are everywhere," Agent Butcher said, reaching into his suit and pulling out a slim notebook. He began to write in it, even as he continued talking. "Patterns. Patterns everywhere. If you can detect the patterns, you can extrapolate them to trace chains of causation and correlation. Have you watched the patterns of wind and rain? The graffiti on the walls? Have you put them together and examined their relationships? That is the key, you know. Please keep this in mind for later, Director Piggot, so you do not miss such things again."

Emily Piggot's nose wrinkled in mild disgust. That was parahuman talk. And John Butcher had been at Ellisberg, had he – and he looked familiar? Well. That was a _thing_. "I'll see about getting you set up with a secure office," she said, covering up her dislike with a businesslike manner.

"No, Director Piggot," Agent Baker said, brushing lint off her sleeve. "We do not intend to operate out of East North East Command. I will lead operations in Vermont, while a small team lead by Agent Butcher will investigate this… anomaly in Brockton Bay."

"I will not require an office. My investigation team will be operating under the auspices of the FBI. It makes sense for us to integrate our operations with them," Agent Butcher added. "We will of course keep you notified, but as it stands this is a preventative measure. We have not pinned down the location of the… ah, contagion yet. Or even confirmed its presence in Brockton Bay."

"Your assistance will be required in containment in Region I," Agent Baker said, crossing her black-gloved hands on her lap. "It is fortunate that you understand the necessities of… ah, containment. You understand the human cost when it is not carried out correctly."

Piggot nodded curtly. She'd served her time on containment teams under the DHS. Her time with them was why she had whining machinery grafted to her stumps, and was on immunosuppressants for the rest of her life, stopping her body from rejecting pig-grown artificial organs.

"Good, good," Agent Baker said, tilting her head to the left slightly. "You will be instructed to brief your teams as needed when and if it is required. Agent Butcher will be responsible for operations in this state, so he will be your primary point of contact."

"I look forwards to working together," Agent Butcher said in his monotone.

Emily Piggot did _not _look forwards to working with this man.

"If you find a potential Slaughterhouse vector, do not expose yourself to it. That would be a violation of necessary containment," Agent Baker said, leaning forwards slightly. Her lips were locked in a thin line. "Violations will result in mandatory… ah, isolation. Yes. That will be all, Director."


	23. Lines 3-01

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Arc 3 – Lines**

**Chapter 3.01**

"… reports are coming in from Washington DC that feared crime boss El Diablo Blanco may have been captured by a PRT led by Justice after a high speed car chase. Eye witness reports are sketchy, but if this is true, it could be the end for the infamous narco-lord." The radio stopped blathering as Dad turned the dial, obviously preparing for a pep talk.

The sky was black as tar, and hail and thunder lashed down as if the world wept bitter tears for the dreadful things which were about to happen. Screams had echoed through the sleeping city last night, but they'd just been an omen for further horrors, yet to come.

Okay, I was stretching the truth a bit. The weather was actually pretty clear. It had even warmed up. But it was _metaphorically _a thunderstorm of portentous evil and doom and stuff. Not metaphorically in the Other Place, which was its normal grey rusty decaying self, but just… metaphorically. Literally metaphorically.

Yes.

I was going back to school.

"Are you feeling okay?" my dad asked gingerly, as he turned onto the road leading to Winslow. I could see the school ahead, lurking on the right. The parking lot fronting it was full of other cars dropping people off.

"Yeah," I said in a small voice. "Well, no. But I'm going to have to do it some time."

He almost went to pat me on the shoulder, but he had to grab the wheel again as some maniac cut ahead of him in the lane. He let out a faint growl, knuckles whitening.

For all that I made light of going back, it really wasn't a laughing matter. I'd found myself doing that more and more, mocking things that scared me. I guess considering my powers, it was only natural. They showed me that everything sucked, showed people as monsters, showed me how everyone was suffering. I either had to try to find some humour in what I saw, or I'd go mad for real. Then I'd wind up back in the psych hospital and we couldn't afford that. I couldn't afford that.

Speaking of madness, I could see a street preacher, taking advantage of the start of the school day to hand out leaflets just outside the gates. He was dressed in a dirty green coat covered in hand-drawn sketches and scrawlings that he'd stuck onto the coat with masking tape. He might have been going for holiness, but it made him look like a walking newspaper. The other students were ignoring him, and he'd probably be moved along pretty soon. Him and his placard, marked

_ROMANS 3:5  
THE UNRIGHTEOUS  
FEAR GOD'S  
RIGHTEOUSNESS _

Yeah, they'd probably have him shunted along pretty damn quickly. Or maybe they'd even call the police. There'd been that school shooting a few months back by an Endbringer cultist, and let's be honest here, wandering around outside schools threatening the unrighteous was creepy at best.

Dad saw him too. "You want me to walk you past the gates?" he asked in a low voice as we pulled to a stop. His green eyes were worried as he looked between me and the preacher, his hands unconsciously clenched into fists.

I pursed my lips. "I'll be fine," I said back. "I'll just ignore him and go straight past." I swallowed. "I'm going to the principal's office straight away anyway, so I can tell them that there's a creepy guy outside the gates."

He nodded. "Probably a good idea," he said. Reaching out, he went to squeeze my hand, remembered himself, and squeezed my shoulder instead. "Taylor. It'll be fine."

"I hope so," I said in a tiny voice. I didn't think it would be. I felt sick, and the butterflies in my stomach were a whirling maelstrom. They were probably actual butterflies in the Other Place, too. The image didn't help. "I'll…" I swallowed, "I'll see you this evening," I said, my voice coming out rather higher pitched than I meant.

"Yeah," he said, sounding a bit choked up. "Good luck. I'll be back later today because I'll be visiting Tim in hospital, but if you need me, call me and I'll come straight away."

"Thanks," I said, slipping out of the car. I walked straight past the crazy preacher at the gates and his cry of 'God loves you! He sent his beloved Son, his heir and scion, to die for us!'. I wasn't alone in doing that. Most of the other students were similarly pretending he didn't exist, and walked on by when he tried to thrust fliers covered in red text at them. Even the ones who acknowledged him only did it to mock him.

I didn't need to check the Other Place to guess that he was probably mentally ill, but I couldn't really sum up the resolve to feel bad about how he was treated. He was creepy. He could have anything under that coat. Or nothing at all, which was a mental image I _really _didn't need.

I shook my head, trying to dislodge that thought, and waved Dad goodbye before heading inside. Despite the warmth, I was wearing a big baggy sweater. It covered up the bands on my wrists, and meant the fact that I was wearing gloves looked a little less strange. Other girls might have had a problem with this covering up their figure, but since I didn't have one to speak of it wasn't much of a loss. At least I'd put on make-up this morning. I'd have to get used to that. It covered the scars on my face, which were only really pink lines now, but would take years to fade.

At least that wouldn't stand out. Lots of other girls were wearing the same amount of make-up. Although they weren't wearing it to cover self-inflicted scars, so I still thought they were using too much.

Gloved hands in my pockets, I sloped through the halls trying not to catch anyone else's eyes. I didn't have any friends to welcome me back, so anyone who was looking to give me a greeting didn't mean well. That meant that I spent time staring at the red linoleum. It was filthy with footprints, the colour faded and grubby. I had no idea how bad it was in the Other Place, and I wasn't sure I wanted to check.

God, I hated this place. And I felt like I was going to be sick from nerves.

I darted into the nearest bathroom. The air stank of cigarettes, and a glance at the ceiling revealed a gutted smoke detector. Several Japanese girls were glaring at me, cigarettes in hands, leaving a cold feeling on the back of my neck as I turned away. I had the distinct feeling this had been a mistake.

Fuck, I was out of practice at day-to-day life in Winslow. This had been one of the safe bathrooms before. One of the gangs must have colonised it when I was away.

Sidling up the nearest sink, I ran the cold water and went to wash my hands before I realised I was still wearing my gloves. I changed the movement to trying to scrub an imaginary stain out of my jumper. I could feel all of them staring at me and talking to each other in Japanese and I really really wanted out of here. Anyway, I was in the bathroom – the wrong bathroom, not a bathroom someone like me ever normally went into – and so I might as well do what I had to do.

Namely, exhale out a cloud of tens of shaking butterflies with rust-red wings, and then trap them in a cage made of barbed wire. I left the cage in the bathroom when I stepped out, rid of the nerves. I could always use it for something later.

I was thinking more clearly now, and wasn't feeling sick. I called upon Isolation, thinking of everyone deliberately looking past the preacher, and made my way up to the principal's office surrounded in an aura of see-me-not. I had to report there, to talk about some of the new arrangements they had in place to 'protect me'.

Cover their asses, more like.

I had to wait in the pale green antechamber for ten minutes before I was let in to see the principal. It gave me some time to think about my life and what I was going to do next. I had the rest of my time at school all planned out, of course. I'd just need to work on my grades and pass unnoticed and hide from anyone who wanted to make trouble for me. I could do that. I had Isolation on my side, as well as any other tricks I might be able to pull out. I just had to wait out high school. I could do that.

No, what I really had to do was think about what I'd be doing in my newfound other life. I wasn't quite sure what had given me the idea to pretend to be part of a secret government conspiracy. Okay, that was a lie. It had probably been Foucault's Pendulum that had put the idea into my head. After all, that had been about a fake conspiracy – at least from the bits that I'd understood.

Maybe it had been a mistake. I didn't know. After all, if I was thought to just be a junior member, I'd get in less trouble if I was caught, right? I could tell them I'd just been following orders, and maybe my powers would even let me make myself believe that, if they used lie detectors.

And there was a wild, almost manic edge to it. The idea that I was tricking the government into thinking there was a secret agency working in Brockton Bay… it made me want to laugh to myself. Here I was, someone who couldn't even stop herself from being bullied at school and who'd spent weeks in a psych hospital eating what I was told when I was told, and I was fooling the government. It was a little form of power. I might not even be worth a proper investigation after almost dying in a locker, but at least I could do this!

And I had made a difference! I had missed the police raid on the sweatshop. That was annoying me, because I'd been planning to watch it. I'd stayed up late every night after sending a barbed-wire cherub to get the information to the PPD, watching the warehouse on a crackling CRT monitor in the Other Place. Despite that, they'd done the raid sometime early in the morning last Thursday, after I'd gone to bed. It had probably been a 'dawn raid', if TV didn't lie to me about what cops did when raiding a location where dangerous criminals were hiding out.

Still, the place was now gone. Shut down. It had been in the news, as an 'and in other news' kind of story. Which was wrong because it should have been more important, but at least it had made the news even it hadn't been a lead story. I was still saving the article for my scrapbook. I needed to buy a scrapbook.

After it was over, I'd checked the location in person, and although it was still terrible and rotten, it was… it was bad in a _dead _way, if you get what I mean. It was like it was a scab in the landscape of the Other Place, rather than a raw wound.

It would heal in time. I hoped.

I was interrupted from my thoughts when I was called in by the principal. The office was the same as the last time I saw it. This included the heater by the wall being on full blast, which left it stuffy. There was a plump bearded teacher wearing a turban in there with her, and he was clearly sweating in the warmth. I was feeling the heat too. I wanted to take my jumper off, but I wasn't about to show my arms and the wristbands I was wearing to cover the scars.

I should have remembered to wear a long-sleeved t-shirt, I thought to myself.

"Ah, Taylor," Principal Blackwell said, shooting an undoubtedly false smile at me. "Welcome back. How are you feeling?"

"Fine," I said. It wasn't a lie. After all, my nervousness was currently trapped in a wire cage in one of the girls' bathrooms. "How are you?" I asked, to cover up my momentary distraction as I slipped into the Other Place and took in her office. It hadn't changed much in the week or so since I was last here.

"Oh, fine, fine," whined the dog-faced monster which now stood in her place. Still a bitch in the Other Place, I noted. She gestured to a stinking, rotting seat that smelt of guilt and worry. How kind of the chair to tell me what the people who'd sat in it had felt. Exhaling, I sent out the silvery worm of Sympathy to gnaw at the principal's ear, and knew even without looking that her expression was taking on an apologetic cast. One I knew to be genuine, thanks to Sympathy crawling into her head. "Taylor, this is Mr Kaur."

He rose and shook my hand. He was a stony-faced old statue, cracked and blackened in places as though by heat. One part was even half-melted, like a gummy bear someone had sucked on. I had no idea what that meant – maybe that he was hard and tough, but also prone to very hot rages? I set a second Sympathy on him, and then dropped out of the Other Place.

"He's heading up our… ahem, new anti-bullying drive," the principal added.

"I'll also be your new English teacher," he said. His accent was strongly Bostonian, which surprised me. You wouldn't have thought that to look at him. It didn't seem to fit his appearance at all.

Then I felt a bit racist for thinking that.

"Hello," I said. "So… um, I guess we'll be seeing each other quite often?"

He smiled at me, as Sympathy got to work. "Yes," he said. "Don't worry. If everything goes right, we'll only have to interact as teacher and pupil. But you should come talk if you're having problems."

If everything goes right? Hah. I doubted that would be the case.

"Yes," I said.

So I sat and sweltered and Mr Kaur sweated as Principal Blackwell went on and on about the procedures they were putting in place and how I was to report any trouble to him and how 'there had been failings' but 'there's no reason we should let this ruin the rest of your time here' and lots of other meaningless platitudes. They wouldn't help me.

"Excuse me," Mr Kaur interrupted to my great relief, clearing his throat, "but Taylor and I have to get to our scheduled lesson."

"Oh, of course, of course," the principal said, her head bobbing as she nodded.

It was a relief to get out of that room, back into the white walls of the corridors where the teachers had their offices. Mr Kaur blotted at his forehead with a handkerchief. "It was like an oven in there," he said. "I swear, that woman has something wrong with her if she needs an office that hot."

I nodded. "It's warming up a bit," I said. "Outside, I mean. Not in there. That was warm enough already."

"Yes. Maybe we're seeing spring," he said. "Well, I'll know when I can move my plants out of the greenhouse." He paused. "So, anyway," he said, as we headed towards the classroom, "I've read and marked your assigned work. It was nice to see you'd actually done it. Some people try to hand in catch-up work and would you believe it, they clearly hadn't read the book."

I swallowed. "It… it wasn't like I had anything else to do," I said. "And… well, uh, I'd read To Kill a Mockingbird before."

"Ah, good, good," he told me with a smile. "A regular grade-A student, eh?"

My mother had always been insistent I read a lot. She used to read to me when I was younger, and she didn't believe in going easy on the books. They were meant to expand my vocabulary and leave me appreciating literature. Admittedly, I'm not sure how many other people's mothers read them Down and Out in Paris and London when they were little, but that's an occupational hazard of your mother being an English lecturer. "I just like reading," I said.

He grinned at me. "Well, the odds were that there had to be _someone _who liked reading in this school," he said. "Clearly I'll have to fight off the other English teachers when word gets out." He paused. "And then I'll get shot when Lewis pulls out his gun, because I just have my kirpan, so maybe that's not the best course of action."

He expected me to laugh, clearly. I managed a smile. Trailing behind him, I was rather more preoccupied by how this was going to just be one of my new classes.

Room 2c could have been almost any of the other rooms in Winslow. The walls were faded and cracked, and the chalkboards were gray with accumulated dust. The grubby windows looked out over the parking lot outside the school, with a row of bare trees failing to obscure the road on the far side. It was noisy, with everyone talking to each other. It got slightly quieter when we stepped into the room and some people noticed the teacher was here, but only slightly.

"Ahem!" Mr Kaur said loudly. "Ahem! Everyone, be quiet! Yes, that does mean everyone. Jay, that means you too," he said, glaring at a tanned boy. The other students returned to the two-person desks. "This is Taylor. She's transferred to this class for the rest of the year. Taylor… ah, sit with Luci," he said to me, pointing over at a girl with no one sitting next to her. "In my classes, you sit where I tell you to, no excuses. If you want to move, you check with me first. Do you understand?"

I nodded. It seemed like a little thing, but it was actually a good sign. Only the stricter teachers did that at Winslow. That meant he was one of the ones who kept his classes in order, and would punish people who acted up in his lessons. Those classes had always been a respite for me, because my bullies were 'good girls'. They didn't want to get caught doing anything bad, and were smart enough to know when to hold off. It wasn't like that with teachers who didn't care, or wanted to be friends with their students. The worst was when the teachers let students talk to each other, and I'd spend the whole lesson in earshot of insults and whispers spoken deliberately loud enough for me to hear.

I put my bag down next to her, and she shuffled her chair up slightly, to make space for me.

"Hi," she said, adjusting her wire rim spectacles. Luci had coffee-coloured skin, and her hair was tied back into pigtails. She was wearing a faded purple-and-white t-shirt, and jeans. She was quite pretty. Certainly she was prettier than me, even if she was nearly as skinny. Not being a freakishly tall beanpole helped her case a lot. I glanced at the desk before her. She'd laid out all her pens neatly before her, and had three different colours of ink. Her working book had curling twirly vine-like symbols drawn over the covers.

"Hi," I said back, sinking into the Other Place. There, she had far, far too many eyes, glowing bright yellow in the gloom, all somehow looking down on me. It seemed she'd already decided I wasn't as good as her. The eyes covered her face and her hands, and the glows from under her ragged and tattered clothes suggested they were there, too. Her fingers were almost as long as her forearms, were splattered in paint, and twitched all the time. Paranoia, maybe? Or was she a thief with those twitching fingers? I wasn't sure. There was a judgmental cast to her features, and spurs of bone erupted from her skull like a crown.

So she was Daddy's little princess. Great.

Either way, if I was going to have to sit next to her, I'd have to take precautions. It only took a moment for me to think up what I'd need to do. A doll with a TV screen for a face, to stream words like 'BE NICE' and 'TREAT HER WELL' right into each and every single one of her eyes. I vaguely remembered her face from crowds, but I didn't think she'd actively ever done anything to me. I didn't want another enemy. I left the doll flashing its messages into her eyes in the Other Place, and returned to normalcy.

"Did you just transfer in?" she asked, playing with one of her pens.

"Um… no," I said. "I… I was off ill for a while and they moved my classes around." I didn't want her knowing of me as 'the girl who got shut in the locker full of tampons'. Of course, she had probably already heard, but maybe I could at least save myself a few days of mockery about that.

"Ah, tough luck," she said, as I rummaged through my bag, looking for my pencil case. She paused. "Forget your locker key?" she asked, looking at my bag. "There's probably still time to go dump it, if you run." She had quite a notable New York accent, I noticed. Well, that wasn't surprising. A lot of people had moved away when the Leviathan had hit Manhattan, and Brockton Bay had picked up some of them. After all, it wasn't like we were too far, relatively speaking, from New York.

Of course I wasn't going to be using my locker. They'd probably just scrubbed it down, but I couldn't have even if they'd totally decontaminated it. I… I couldn't. I just _couldn't_. "I'm fine," I said.

"Okay!" Mr Kaur announced to the class. "So, everyone. Does everyone have their copies of Death of a Salesman with them _this _time? If you don't, share with your partner. If you both don't, raise your hands. Everyone else, turn to the start of Act II."

I pulled out my old, yellowed copy. It had originally been my mother's, and there were some of her annotations in the columns. I was scared to take it into school like this where it might get stolen, but Dad had insisted that I take it. I was going to send a barbed-wire cherub to take it home immediately once this lesson was over.

Then the lesson was in full flow, and I was trying to avoid being asked any questions. It was hard enough work keeping up with the notes. I was out of practice with writing. By the time the bell rang, my hand was aching and stiff.

Still, it could have been a lot worse. No one jabbed me in the ribs, no one loudly whispered rumours about me, and the only time I had to pick my pens off the ground was when I actually really dropped them.

"Everyone, before the next lesson, I want you to read up to the bit in Act II where Willy enters Howard's office," Mr Kaur told us, as we prepared to move on to the next lesson. I sent a barbed-wire cherub to dump my book at home and then trailed out, hanging back so I didn't get pushed or shoved in the crowds.

"So, what was she like?" I heard one girl ask Luci.

"Who?" There was an awkward pause, and then Luci coughed. "Oh, the new girl? Taylor? Oh yeah. Quiet. Didn't talk with her, like, at all." She snorted. "Could be worse. If Mr Kaur's not going to put me next to a friend, someone who doesn't go on and on, does the work, and doesn't try to beg answers off me is the next best thing."

Like I'd need to ask her for answers, I thought, feeling outraged. I wasn't the one who'd spent the lesson drawing in the margins of her book.

"And doesn't smell. Like Suzenne. What's her problem? You doing anything after school?"

"Working. Again."

"Your uncle is a real slave-driver, you know that?" and that was all I heard before I lost them in the crowd. Despite that, I was smiling to myself. I didn't have _those three_ in my classes any more. I'd just have to dodge them in the halls, and I could do that. I could be quiet. I'd just do my work and I'd… I'd find people like that who just wanted to be sitting next to someone quiet. I wouldn't draw attention to myself and things would just go fine. Wrapping myself in Isolation again, I headed off to History.

And History went fine, too. The teacher told me that he had received my assigned work but hadn't marked it yet, and then I found a free desk by the window and hid myself in a weaker version of Isolation. No one tried to talk to me, no one whispered about the new girl, and I got my work done.

Of course my luck had to run out. And it did so in the lunch line, where I couldn't use Isolation if I wanted to be served.

"Oh, look. Do you smell something bad around here?" a very familiar voice said behind me. "It smells even worse than the usual cooking."

I didn't need to turn to see who it was. That was my former best friend, Emma Barnes. I balled my hands into fists, ignoring the pain, and tried to control my breathing. I hated her. I hated her so much. And in the reflective metal of the food counter, I could see that she'd brought my other two least favourite people with her.

From now on, I was taking packed lunches.


	24. Lines 3-02

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 3.02**

I couldn't help it. I felt the coldness of the Other Place rush over me, like I'd suddenly stepped into a walk-in freezer. I gritted my teeth and tried to put it out of my mind, but I couldn't. I simply couldn't. It was the same confused panic that I'd needed to beat to get a grip on my powers. Fear squirmed in my head. I couldn't get rid of it, couldn't clear my mind. All I could think was that it was _them_.

The smell of the Other lunch hall was thick and glutinous, tasted more than smelt, sharp rot and sickly fat slapping my tongue. Ogres lurked ahead of me serving behind the counter, holding their ladles like clubs. I gripped onto my filthy tray, focussing on it. I wasn't going to turn around. Not until I calmed down. I didn't want to see them in the Other Place. I knew they were monsters in real life. I didn't need my creepy power to tell me that. It might not have shown the school as the living hell it was, but that was probably just because it was diluted across the whole student body. I didn't need to see the specifics. Especially not for them.

The guilt was on their hands. They'd carried it with them. I could smell the locker again. Had they not washed since then? The blood and filth and rot was right behind me. I could see them in the tarnished metal of the counters. God, how had I not noticed them? Had I just been too ready to pretend I'd never see them again, or had they cut in line to 'greet' me?

My tray clattered against the metal rail. My hands were shaking and my knees felt like jelly. They were going to get me. The three-headed monster was going to grab me and drag me back and… and they'd stuff me in there again. I wouldn't get out this time. No one would notice. Just like last time.

I heard Emma say something, but I wasn't listening. I couldn't listen. The smell was overpowering. Something patted me on the back, and I nearly screamed. I could feel the moisture seeping into me. Staining my clothes. Creeping and crawling over my skin. Leaving me dirty. Sullied. Unclean.

Focussing on my breathing, I tried to ignore the stench. I could _taste _the air. Each breath made me gag.

I had to get out of there. My vision in the Other Place stayed clear, but I could feel my eyes welling up. I left my tray on the rail and turned on my heel. I didn't have any destination. I just needed to get away from them. I didn't know what I'd do if they followed me. Hounds made of clotted blood and angels covered in snipping blades flashed through my head and I didn't know why I hadn't made them already. Why I wasn't I making those three_suffer_? There had to be a reason why I hadn't done it yet. There had to be.

Ah.

That was it. I was the good one. They were the villains. That was my lifeline. That was what I had to cling to, to stop me doing what I really, really wanted to do. To stop me giving them what they deserved. I wasn't even sure if the whispering I heard as I walked past table after table of monsters was real or not. I was just focussed on getting out of there, before I broke down entirely or did something I'd regret. Something they'd regret.

Just as I reached the corridor and safety, I made the mistake of looking back. They hadn't followed me. They were still in the lunch line. And they looked enough like themselves for me to recognise them.

Emma had no skin.

Emma had no _skin_.

I could see the wet, naked redness of her hands and neck. Her clothes were soaked crimson, and there was a pottery mask stapled to her face. It was sculpted to look like her features, but it was cracked and broken and red wept from the fractures and eye holes.

I gasped. I tried to cover it up, but I couldn't.

Compared to her, the other two weren't… weren't quite so bad. Sophia's skin was a thin paper layer over leaking, creeping black smoke. Her features had an animal cast, a snarling savage look that made me think of werewolf movies. Madison had two faces each with two twisted horns, living side by side and splitting her head in two. Their mouths took turns muttering, though I couldn't pick out the words. Her hands were blood-stained.

Oh, thank you Other Place. Yes, Sophia has a dark side and Madison is a two-faced cow. No fundamental insights there. But Emma – I had no idea what was going on there.

I'd like to think I managed to come up with all those observations on the spot. Of course I didn't. I could barely think. I fled. It was that simple. I ran away. I couldn't face it. I couldn't even be in the same room as those three. I ran away and locked myself in a cubicle in one of the girls' bathrooms – a safe one this time, luckily – and cried. I couldn't even get into the right state of mind to use my powers to calm myself. It took me long minutes to force myself out of the Other Place, back into the relative relief of a cramped, graffiti-coated toilet cubicle.

Blotting my eyes on the toilet paper, I took a great shuddering breath. I knew I looked like a mess. Some of my foundation was coming off on the paper, so I'd need to reapply that before the afternoon lessons. My eyes stung with salt, the way they only do when you've been crying too long.

I blew my nose on the soggy toilet paper as quietly as I could. Other people had probably already heard me in here, but I didn't want to make it worse for myself.

Goddammit. Breaking down crying on my first day. I couldn't really hope they hadn't realised what I was doing. There was only one reason I'd run away like that. I could look forwards to all kinds of rumours being spread about me. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. I'd cried, and they'd use that to make me cry again. They knew I was weak. Pathetic. Couldn't even look them in the eyes.

Fuck it. So much for any hope that becoming a parahuman would give me the confidence to stand up to them. Of course, my powers really could do that. I could lock away my fear, if I was strong enough.

And then I'd probably go and do something horrible to them with my powers, and the feds would be brought in and then I'd be the villain. Only the fact that I was scared of the consequences was stopping me from doing something _wrong_.

Fuck it all.

I don't know how I made it through the rest of the school day. I very nearly didn't. I was on the verge of calling Dad and asking to be picked up, but I just… I just didn't want to look weak. It wasn't like they'd really said anything. They hadn't even touched me. And what if he didn't understand? Sure, he'd act understanding, but he'd… he'd think I was crazy for breaking into tears just at the sight of them.

And the school would definitely find out if I told him. Yes. I couldn't let them know. It would mean that if they did anything really serious, I might not be believed. It would be like crying wolf. What would I be able to tell them? 'I saw them and they said a few things and I broke down?' They wouldn't do anything about that. They wouldn't _want_ to do anything about that. They'd just be all 'we can't punish them just because you saw them, can we?' and I wouldn't be fucking patronised like that. I couldn't take it.

I'd… I'd just wait. Wait them out. I could stand it, if they didn't do anything worse. If they _did_ do something worse, I'd have something more serious I could take to the school.

If they fucking _touched _me or my things or… or anything, that would be it.

So I just wrapped myself in Isolation and went to my lessons. That was fine. I was safe in Isolation. Anyway, one of the lessons was Computer Studies and I was still in my old class for that. That meant I just had to confirm I'd done the reading I'd been set. Which was easy. The machine at home might not have been new, but half the class didn't have a desktop at all, even one running Windows 2002 with a fan which sounded like a dying hovercraft. I was left alone to browse the web after I'd done the simple bit of 'research' they set us and filled out the multiple choice questions.

So, with nothing else to do, I navigated to the portal, and started looking for stuff about me. I guess I just wanted some reassurance. I wanted to know that I was making a difference. That I wasn't just a pathetic loser who couldn't even look them in the face.

No one was talking about me. I hadn't made the Brockton Bay PPD official listings of active parahumans. There wasn't even anything on the 'unconfirmed sightings' or 'rumours' mailing lists of various fansites.

Which might mean they were covering me up, I thought hopefully. After all, if they _thought _I was part of a secret government conspiracy, of course they wouldn't shout my name from the rooftops. Or maybe they just hadn't got around to it.

I was tearing up again, so I quietly wiped my eyes and blew my nose on some toilet paper I'd stuffed in my pockets. I still would have liked some acknowledgement. Just something to say that I was making a difference. I checked the New England Tribune website. At least they still had their web articles on the police raid. They were talking all about 'inhumane conditions' and 'arrests made'. At least I'd done something there! I… I didn't need public acknowledgement! At least the people in charge would know that Panopticon had made the difference there!

I didn't need the approval of the general public. I… I didn't.

The air in the computer lab was hot and stuffy, the CRTs and the machines whirring away. I fanned myself with my notebook, trying to cool down. They had the door open, but it didn't help. This room was totally intolerable in summer, but it was still too hot now, even though the sky looked overcast and like it might rain. I checked for the teacher. They were helping someone who apparently still hadn't grasped that you needed to save something to be able to find it again later.

Heaving a sigh, I sunk forward, elbows on the keyboard. I was hungry. I'd missed lunch. I'd need to lurk around in Isolation in future, and make sure they weren't there before I dropped it to get food. God. My life was so fucked up. My morning hadn't been too bad. Tolerable, even. And then this had ruined everything. I hated those three so much.

They deserved to suffer. Emma, Madison and Sophia. The school wasn't going to do anything. Dad had said that the police had told him that they didn't have any forensics and without witnesses, there was no case. So maybe it was up to me. I wouldn't do anything _too _bad to them. I was the good guy, after all, while if they had powers they'd totally be villains. But if I got _caught _I'd be in deep shit. They were pretty, popular, and they had contacts like Emma's dad, who was a lawyer. And my power wasn't exactly PR-friendly. No. I was the good one. I couldn't go Carrie on them.

But if any of them _did _happen to have a breakdown and confess to everything, that'd just be justice, right?

Trying to keep quiet, I tore a page out of my notebook and started drawing. I wasn't too great at it, but I was thinking of Other Place creatures. The scribbles and abandoned lines and weird proportions almost helped. It was all about the feel and the ideas and above all, my imagination. The pencil and the paper were just a way to lock the ideas down.

I narrowed my eyes. Go Carrie on them. I couldn't, but thinking about it, that wasn't the right Stephen King book. And no, not Firestarter either. I couldn't do that. Or Pet Semetary. Actually, considering how screwed up my power was, it might even let me reanimate corpses as evil twisted parodies of themselves. I would probably want to avoid that. Likewise, it probably could do the whole It thing with the fears and stuff. Hopefully with less underage sex. And the less said about Haven or St. George or Rage, the better.

Working through my mother's Stephen King collection when I was about eleven was probably a bad influence. I'll just cut to the chase – I was thinking of Thinner. My pencil scratched out a shape. It started out as a wolf with wide-open slathering jaws, but it turned out I wasn't very good at drawing legs, so I'd decided a snake would be easier. A skeletal snake made of rusty metal, its mouth open wide but its iron ribs spilling open, so it could never feel full. Thin and wasting away. Just like Emma would.

Wait, wouldn't that just make her hungry all the time? She'd eat too much because she wouldn't know how to stop. I chewed the end of my pencil, thinking. I'd originally thought about making everyone think she was anorexic, but that worked too. In fact, in some ways it worked better. After all, she was so proud of her stupid amateur modelling. Being too thin was probably a _plus _for that. But that'd be ruined if she got fat from stuffing her face at every meal, and no one would suspect anything except for her being a pig.

Sure, it wouldn't do anything to make her actually _confess _to what she'd done, but you know what? Emma had it coming. And the others too. I'd need to think up something for them. As the bell rang for the end of the day, everyone else rushed out of the stuffy room, but I took my time. I didn't want to be caught in the crowds, and anyway, I had to recreate Isolation.

It was a good thing I did. Madison was waiting for me outside. Not in an obvious place. She'd tucked herself into a recess in the wall, next to the fire extinguisher cabinet. I almost didn't notice her. I probably wouldn't have, if I hadn't still been in the Other Place and heard her muttering.

I flattened myself against the opposite wall, not caring that I was in Isolation. My breath came in gasps, and I felt faint. She… she'd actually been _waiting_for me here? I edged away, ignoring the flakes of rotting paint rubbing off on my clothes. The wall's bare concrete was solid, a reassuring surface, and the faint whirr of my circling rust-red butterflies reminded me that I was safe. I was going to control myself. I wasn't going to scream.

Swallowing and focussing, I emptied my mind and left the Other Place. No, it wasn't someone else who just happened to look the same to my powers. It was her. She was wearing new jeans and a pale pink fitted t-shirt with the slogan '24/7 Me Time'. Madison might not have been attractive in the same way Emma was, but she was still prettier than me. That wasn't really much of an accomplishment, but she was all petite compared to my lanky beanpole-ness, had brown hair which was naturally straight and didn't go frizzy in the rain, and above all _got on _with people. Stupid people who couldn't see how horrible she was.

What did she want? What was she going to do? She didn't have anything in her hands, so she at least she hadn't been waiting to throw something at me. She liked her 'practical jokes'. You know, funny stuff like emptying pencil shavings down the back of my neck, or 'accidentally' dropping an open juice carton in my bag. Still, she was waiting for me out here, and that meant she was planning something. Anyway, no one who was up to any good would be lurking like that.

I sniffed, then squared my jaw. So, seeing me cry at lunchtime wasn't enough, was it? I'd shown weakness in front of them, and they'd smelt blood. Rotting, stinking… I shook my head. No. I wouldn't dwell on that. I peered at her through my spectacles, pressed into her little beige corner, hugging her book-bag tight. Was there something in it? What could she want?

Fuck it. I was hungry, and the day was over. I just had to get out of here. I could grab something to eat on the way home and put the hellish existence that was to once more be my daily school life out of mind. For all of twelve-ish hours, before I had to get ready to do all over again.

I didn't hang around. The weather had got worse, and now the clouds were iron grey. The street lamps had been turned on early, and looking to the east, I could see the night-lights of the Boardwalk already shining their advertising slogans up at the grey sky. The smart thing to do would be to get home before it started raining, but at this point I didn't even care.

The cars zoomed past. I stamped down the sidewalk, hands thrust into my pockets, ignoring the other pedestrians in their brightly coloured waterproofs. None of them knew me. I just had to get away. To be alone for a while. Home wouldn't be a good place for that, not once Dad got back. Hell, there was a good chance he was home already, waiting for me as a 'surprise' after my first day back, and I… I just needed to get away. To calm down.

Also, I was hungry.

So I'd take the long way home. If he asked where I'd been, I'd just needed to talk to some teacher after school about my first day back. Hah! If the school had been not-shit, they'd have done that anyway. So, actually, I'd just tell him I couldn't find the teacher I'd been looking for, because I certainly wasn't going to cover their asses for them.

Walking through some parts of Brockton Bay was like walking through time. There's nothing new, just different layers of old and ignored. I cut through the old theatre circuit around Ferryman, leaving the grey Sixties area around Winslow in favour of crumbling facades from the Twenties. The theatres were almost all gone, and the cinemas which had taken their place were mostly bankrupt too. Even the Eighties in-town mall was bland concrete. I could hardly tell what colour they'd originally painted it, it was so faded and covered in graffiti. It barely looked any different in the Other Place, apart from gaining a slightly predatory air from all the famine-victim faces sprouting from the walls.

I could read that Other Place metaphor just fine. What happens to a business that's all about buy-buy-buy when the people stop buying? It starves.

Sighing, I returned to the normal world. My glasses were fogged up, so I took them off to polish them. When I put them back on, the blur in front of me became a black cat, scavenging in piles of garbage stacked up in the street. It stared at me, its amber gaze feral.

"I'm not here to take your food, kitty," I told it. I felt a drop of rain land on me. "You'll want to get under cover," I told it. "Else you'll get all wet."

It didn't pay any attention, but I picked up the pace. I didn't want to get drenched.

No such luck. It started raining. Heavily. I hated this day.

I ducked into the nearest shop, which turned out to be a discount electronics store. It smelt of ozone and heated plastic, and the shelves bulged with mismatched boxes. Fans whined overhead. I pretended to be browsing for something. Most of the goods had their labels written in Spanish, made in South American factories. The warranties would probably all be invalid or dodgy. That was the cost of not being able to afford the expensive tinkerfab things from shops on the Boardwalk. The fluorescent light was too bright, which only made the gloom outside more of a contrast. Sighing, I stared out at the rain, counting the cars which zipped past the dollar store on the other side of the road. A police car went screaming by, the lights a patch of colour out in the darkness.

I could have sent Sniffer or a barbed-wire cherub to follow them, to see what was going on. I could have. But what would be the point? I looked around this cheap shop full of cheap electronics run by cheap men. Was there anything here worth protecting? I had all these powers and none of them did anything to make things _better_.

Massaging my brow, I screwed my eyes shut. Maybe it was just low blood sugar. And being in a shit mood. I _knew_ I'd made a difference with the sweatshop. I'd saved people, saved lives. I'd just need to find somewhere else I could change things for the better. I'd find more parahumans and see what their powers looked like. Anything was better than thinking about how shit school was.

Across the road, a red-lit sign flickered above a dollar store. I wondered if they had a map of Brockton Bay in there. If my power was good for one thing, it was finding out what was really going on. If I was going to take up jogging, I'd see more of the city. I should be able to mark down places where the Other Place showed bad things were happening.

I laughed bitterly to myself. I guessed what I was really going to be looking for was a cause.


	25. Lines 3-03

****An Imago of Rust and Crimson****

**Chapter 3.03**

The lights were off when I got back home. The rain had let up just long enough for me to think that I could make it if I made a dash for it. I'd been wrong. I was about as wet as I'd have been if I'd fallen in the Bay. Why hadn't I packed a proper coat? There were flashes of lightning in the distance, to the west, and I'd heard a crackle of gunfire from over towards the Docks.

I was shivering uncontrollably as I fumbled with my keys. It took me three tries to open the locks properly, and even then the door was swollen shut with the wet. My scars ached as I yanked it open.

"Hello?" I called out. I don't know why I bothered. I knew Dad wasn't back. "Is anyone there?"

Fortunately, there was no response. That would have been pretty creepy.

I had to kick the door a few times to get it to shut. The repeated impacts from me and Dad had left a dirty, scraped smear at the bottom. I took my shoes off, turned the lights on and shed my bag to the floor. The red light on the answerphone was blinking, so I hit the 'Messages' button and wandered in my soaked socks through to the kitchen, leaving wet footsteps as it played.

"You have… _seven_… new messages. Message one is for…" the voice shifted, to the recorded voice of the speaker, "_Daniel Hebert_. Message two is for…_Danny_."

My hair was a mess, no two ways about it. Do you know how much moisture curly hair can hold? It was beyond 'frizzy' and into 'fresh out of the shower' territory. It'd take hours to dry properly. My clothes weren't any drier, but at least I could change out of them before I caught a cold. I didn't need that on top of everything else. The drying rack was on the way to the kitchen, so my sweater went straight onto it.

"Message three is for… _Taylor_." That was my Dad's voice. He'd said he'd be back late, so he'd clearly left me a message. "Message four is for… _Danny Hebert_."

In the end my food money had gone toward things from the dollar store. I squelched in my socks over to the breadbin. There was probably enough stuff in the fridge for a sandwich.

"Message five is for… _Taylor? It was 'Taylor', right? Like, I don't need to say it with a French acc-_." The recording cut out, as the speaker hit the name limit on the answerphone. I frowned. Who was th… wait, no. The voice was familiar. Sam, that was it. Yes. One of the other girls from the psych hospital. "Message six is for… _Taylor_." It was Sam again. "Message seven is for… _Danny_. Press the number of the call to play that message. Press star to play the message list again. Press hash for options, including to delete all messages."

I went back to the phone and pressed three.

"Hey, Taylor, it's Dad. Just calling to check that you got home okay and ask if… you know, uh, everything went well. Like I told you this morning, I'm going to the hospital for a bit, but I should be back by six at the latest. Well, seven at the very very latest. I'll be out of the office this afternoon, but ring my office number and tell me when you get home, okay? Love you!

"Oh! Oh yeah, looking at the weather, it looks like it's going to rain so could you please take the washing in from the back yard? I thought it was going to stay clear all day, but the forecast must've been wrong. Thanks!"

"End of message. To hear the message again, press one. To delete the message, press two. To list the messages again, press three."

I looked up, staring at the wall. Oops. Well, it would probably have helped if I'd been home earlier. I sighed. I might as well go do it while I was already drenched.

No, wait. I should throw on a coat and _then _go do it.

Fortunately, everything had stayed on the washing rack, even if it was soaked. I brought it in and left it next to my sweater to dry, and then grabbed some bread and went upstairs to get changed. I'd managed to get even wetter, which I hadn't been sure was possible. My hair was dripping down the back of my neck, even after I wrung it out.

I almost changed into my pyjamas right away. Maybe an early night would do me good. In the end, though, I got out of my wet clothes, wrapped myself in towels and then broke out the hairdryer.

The whir and the warmth and the smell of hot plastic was weirdly comforting, even if it made my hair all frizzy. I was probably going to have to wash it again tonight, because I had school tomorrow. Again. Another day. I'd have to go back. There was no way out. What was I going to do?

I cut off the panic attack by exhaling my fear. I left her pinned in the bathtub like a butterfly in a specimen collection, her face locked in a silent scream, and walked out feeling like I could face school tomorrow. I might have to do this again in the morning, but that was something I could handle when I came to it.

In my newly relaxed state of mind – helped by the dry clothes as well as the creepy powers – I pulled out my purchases from my wet bag. I now had a map of Brockton Bay – a little out of date, it was from 2005 – and a newly purchased diary and some sheets of little white dot stickers. The diary was from two years ago, but I wasn't going to be using it as a diary so it was okay. Sorting through the books covering my desk and dumping them on my bed, I unfolded the map and laid it out. Carefully I peeled off one of the little stickers, and after some hunting attached it to the location – the former location, thanks to me - of the sweatshop.

Finding a pen, I carefully wrote a '1' on the sticker, and then made a corresponding entry in the diary for 1st January.

_1\. Sweatshop in the Docks. RESOLVED – SHUT DOWN_

Then I drew a little tick next to it. Next thing, I attached a '2'-labelled sticker to the location of Monarch Clothes in the Boardwalk. The map was less accurate there – the Boardwalk had seen a lot of development since then. I added a note for that, too in the box for 2nd January.

_2\. Bought products made in 1. Investigate further? Check on it later, see if they're still buying from slavers. Did they know first time? If still don't know after 1 shut down, assume they're choosing not to know._

Thunder cracked outside. I glowered at the notebook. I hoped they'd take the hint. If they didn't clean up their act, I'd have to… to break into their offices, maybe, and find a list of all their suppliers. Maybe I should do that anyway.

But it was in the Boardwalk, and there were cameras all over the place there. I didn't know if Isolation would hide me from machines. Probably not, knowing my luck. After all, people still saw me when I was using Isolation, they just didn't pay any attention. So they'd probably see my picture on cameras, because I wasn't literally invisible. And then they'd freak out, because they couldn't see anyone in person.

I smiled to myself as I thought of showing up in full costume in the background of tourists' photos around the Boardwalk, but it probably wasn't a great idea. Even if it would be hilarious for people to get all panicky when they developed their holiday snaps and saw a figure in a gas mask stalking across the back of the shot. But more seriously, I was worried that would mean I'd also show up on those fancy goggles government agents used to see invisible people. Unless those things only existed on TV? They were probably real, though. If I could see invisible people, I'd keep it a secret so people wouldn't know I could see them.

Hey, I probably _could _see invisible people. The Other Place had ways of showing me things. I would be able to see powers, even if the person using them was invisible.

I would like to say that I didn't immediately drop into the Other Place and search my entire room for any invisible onlookers. But there weren't any there.

Folding the map back up, I stuffed it at the bottom of my desk drawer. I hid the diary at the bottom of my wardrobe. The map was meaningless unless you had the diary to act as a key. Hopefully if Dad searched my room, he'd think the old diary was just my old diary, and leave it alone. I frowned. I needed a better hiding place for all my heroing stuff. Hiding my records wouldn't do much good if someone found the gas mask and the rest of the ensemble hidden under my bed.

Yeah, I thought, as I dressed in dry clothes, I needed a hideout. After all, I could use my barbed-wire cherubs to teleport things around, so I could always get my hands on my stuff. And I'd have a bunch of _hard _questions to answer if Dad caught me with my costume, starting with 'what is this?', moving through 'what do you mean, you're a parahuman?' and probably ending in 'how did you even afford this?'. I had no real interest in answering any of those questions, and anyway, he didn't need any more stress at the moment.

The wail of a police siren outside drew my attention. A bit of me wanted to go and send a cherub after it to… do something. I didn't know what. Follow it and see what was going on? But what good would that do? And by the time I'd made my mind up to send a construct to see what was going on, the siren was lost in the noise of the city.

I smiled weakly to myself. I didn't really have time to do the heroing business tonight. I had remedial homework from all my lessons today. This was going to suck. Sorting through my schoolbag, I pulled out the heavy books I needed and went to the old computer in the study. I turned it on, and the fan whirred loudly to life. It was very loud. Then I had to sit there, waiting for the whole five minute plus boot-up sequence to complete.

It was painfully slow. The school at least kept its machines on all the time, even if they were about as old as this thing. I got up and turned on the modem, staring out the window at the slashing rain. The front yard looked like it was flooding. Hopefully it wouldn't cover up the path. I didn't want to get wet feet tomorrow. Or cold feet. I felt a shiver run up my neck, and sniffed. Oh God, was I getting a cold on top of everything else? Sighing, I stared at the dancing droplets as the modem stopped flashing red and started flashing green. I'd only connect up the dial-up when I needed it, in case someone called and…

… fuck. Dial-up. Phone calls. I groaned. I'd forgotten to call Dad. I came down the stairs full speed in a clatter of feet, slipped on the wetness I'd walked into the house, and ran into a door.

"Ow," I managed, from down on the floor. I picked myself up slowly. Fortunately no one had seen me do that, because I felt like an idiot. At least I'd managed to hit the door arm first, and not with my face or something. Why hadn't I looked where I was going?

Limping because my knees hurt and taking rather more care, I managed to get to the phone without any more mishaps. Dialling Dad's work, it went to answer phone.

"Dad, it's Taylor!" I said. "Sorry for not calling! I had to dash out to get the stuff out of the rain and then I got even wetter and I was already soaked so then I went up to get changed and then I forgot! Sorry, sorry! Um. The washing… uh, sort of got wet too because I was right out in the middle of it when I was walking back. Useless forecasts. They said it was going to be cloudy all day, not raining like this.

"But yeah. Um." I swallowed. "Um… school was… was fine," I lied. "A lot of work to catch up on." I twirled the phone cord around my finger, staring at a crack up on the ceiling. "We'll… I'll see how it goes, one day at a time. I guess. Uh. Well, anyway, I'll see you when you get home. Bye."

That was that done, at least. I stood there in the dark, above the flashing red light of the answerphone. Should I listen to the message from Sam? How could I trust what she… wait. I massaged my temples. That was just stupid. Why would she be using it to get more popular with Emma? She almost certainly didn't even know she existed. They went to totally different schools.

I listened to the list of calls again. I felt oddly numb, and I wasn't sure why. After all, I'd talked to her plenty of times, right? Things would go fine. Reaching down, I pressed the five.

"Hi, Taylor, it's Sam. Sam Yeates. Although, uh, I'm not sure I told you my surname, so it might not mean much to you."

If she had told me, I didn't remember. But I recognised the voice.

"Okay, uh, listen… well, I'm out of that place. Do you want to meet up at the weekend or something? I got out yesterday but I'm not going back to school for a bit. My parents have me as an outpatient in another clinic, and… uh, Leah's still back in that place, and I will literally go crazy if I have to spend two weeks with my parents fussing over me without seeing someone. Uh. No joke intended. Probably shouldn't have said literally. I don't mean literally. I mean… uh, what's the other word? Figuratively? That sounds about right, right? If anyone is listening in on this, I am not literally going to go crazy. Um… I don't literally think people are listening in. I'm not paranoid. Oh… damn it. I've fucked this up and now I'm just going on and on and it's not making any sense and you're going to hear this and think I'm crazy."

It was getting somewhat embarrassing to listen to by now.

"Okay, okay… um, I'm just going to hang up and try again. I'll try to make more sense this time, sorry."

"End of message. To hear the message again, press one. To delete the message, press two. To list the messages again, press three."

About half-way through the message, I had started cringing from sympathetic embarrassment. Still, that helped put me at ease somewhat. None of my three least favourite people ever seemed to fuck up like that. They always managed to be popular and always knew what to say, especially if it involved making fun of me. Yeah, I knew all about public embarrassment.

I pressed six, to play her next message.

"Hi, Taylor, it's Sam. Again," her voice said again. "I was just wondering if you might want to meet up around the Boardwalk this weekend. Either Saturday or Sunday would be fine for me. We got on okay, right? Just call me back. This is my smartphone, so you should be able to reach me most of the time. If not, just leave a message and I'll call you on… oh wait, yeah, no cell. Um, I guess tell me when you're free to get called? I dunno. Anyway, yeah, talk to you soon, okay? Hopefully the weather will have cleared up by the weekend, because I swear, it's like the sea is trying to… like, literally conquer the land by aerial drop. Call me."

"End of message. To hear the message again, press one. To delete the message, press two. To list the messages again, press three."

I really should go, I thought, scraping my damp hair away from my face. This was a chance to make friends with someone who went to a different school than me. That had to be a good thing, right? Thunder cracked outside again, and I shivered. But that was a problem itself. She went to the 'good' school. She had a smartphone, which meant she was rich enough to get tinkerfab. What if she made fun of me because all my stuff was old?

No. No. She _knew _I went to Winslow already. I was just being paranoid. She probably wanted to get to know someone who didn't go to Arcadia either.

And then my chain of thought was completely disrupted by another parade of cold shivers running down my neck. A realisation struck me. I wasn't cold anymore. Fuck, I thought. The shivers might not have been from cold even when I was wet. I'd just been using a warm hairdryer, but the hair on my arms was standing on end, my stomach was cramping and I was shivering. That was my powers, not the weather!

I took a quick breath and sank into the Other Place, looking around. I couldn't see anything out of place, in this sordid funhouse reflection of my house. The paint had peeled off the walls and there was a smell of stale beer and salt in the air. Outside, the rain poured down on a rotting, rusty world. It was dirty and polluted and black, and left objects filthy rather than cleaning them, but at least it wasn't blood. I felt a pang of relief. The fact that it had rained blood in the Other Place the day after the Leviathan had attacked Dubai – well, I had thought the two were related. If they were, and it started raining blood again... but it wasn't raining blood.

I took a step forwards towards the window, and stood in a puddle. I was standing in dark water, leaking in under the door. At least it didn't exist in the real world. It was cold and clinging like mud, and when I crouched – still aching from the door – and dipped a finger in it, I could feel a mess of emotions. Sadness. Anger. Loneliness. It left a sticky residue. I sniffed it, and wrinkled my nose. It smelt like the dirt that coated walls all across the city. Brockton Bay was polluting the rain of the Other Place? Or maybe the rain brought the misery with it.

Another cold wave of shivers hit me, stronger than before. I slipped some shoes on, grabbed my wet coat, and yanked open the door. Where was it? What was I feeling? Stepping out onto the porch, the rain slapped me in the face. It was even thicker than in reality, sleeting in great waves at an angle. I wrapped my coat tighter around myself, and tried to ignore the tainted water crawling down my neck and oozing into the wounds from the locker. It almost seemed intentional, deliberate.

Knowing the Other Place, it probably was.

And then I saw it. It was a light in the sky, high overhead. It wasn't like a plane or a helicopter light, though. The entire thing glowed. I couldn't have seen it so clearly in the real world, but in the Other Place my vision was perfect and I could pick out its shape, a blinding comet with six ethereal wings fanned out around it. It left a trail of pure light behind it, which slowly washed away in the squalor of the Other Place.

It was beautiful. It took my breath away. My legs sagged, and I sat down, smiling blindly. I didn't mind the rain. I couldn't feel the taint of the Other Place anymore. I wasn't cold or unhappy or lonely. I was watching an angel, shining and brilliant and wonderful. I stared up at it, sitting on the porch. My legs were getting soaked and I didn't even care. I was crying, but they weren't bad tears. The euphoria filled me up, and left me no space for unhappiness or misery. I… I felt good. Everything was good. The world was good.

Why couldn't the Other Place be like this all the time? Why couldn't life be like this?

The angel circled overhead, moving back and forth, but eventually it turned to leave. It felt like a punch to the gut as it got further and further away, its trail disintegrating, and I realised I was sitting there in the Other Place, soaked in dirty water.

Keeping my eyes wide open, I exhaled, and the form of a barbed-wire cherub appeared next to me. Even in my gleeful state, this was a reminder of how ugly my power was. I swallowed, and looked back up at the angel, letting the pain and the shame wash away. "Cherub!" I told it intently. "Bring it back! Make it come back! Br-bring the niceness!"

The cherub vanished, but it didn't come back, and I watched the angel finally vanish out of sight. I shed the Other Place and stood up, drenched again from sitting out there. I wiped my eyes, telling myself that it was just rain. I kicked the door shut again, but the hallway was already wet. I knew I should get the mop, but I just couldn't be bothered. First I had to dry out and warm up, again.

Now that it was gone, I could think a bit more clearly. I… I didn't think it had been a real angel. Considering the one thing in the world that could be described that way, I really hoped it wasn't. No, I thought it was probably some parahuman, or maybe some kind of tinkertech flying machine. I didn't know how I'd react to tinkertech. If I blissed out when I saw it, that was dangerous. I'd need to be more careful with the Other Place. What if I walked out into the road just because I saw someone's fancy car or Armsmaster's motorcycle or something?

I ignored that little bit of me which said that it wouldn't care so much, if it felt that good. It was not in full possession of the facts.

Sniffing, I wiped my eyes. God, I was a mess. Today had been shit and I was tearing up and I needed to clean myself up again before Dad got home. I wasn't about to tell him that I'd wandered out and sat in the rain because I'd got high off an angel. He'd think I was on drugs, crazy, or both. Maybe it… it was just because I was cold and wet again that I was miserable.

I could fix that.

When Dad got home, he found me wrapped up in blankets in _another _pair of dry clothes, drinking hot chocolate in front of the television.

"-speaking from Jerusalem, President Barghouti has once again refused to publicly confirm or deny if Palestine retains any stocks of nanological weapons. He made it clear several times, though, Janice, that Palestine absolutely refuses to engage in unilateral disarmament of its nuclear arsenal. The Pan Arab States have moved to back his statem-"

I turned off the news. It was boring international stuff while I waited for the local news to come on and tell me something which actually mattered. "Heya," I said.

He looked damp, like he'd been out in the rain longer than the dash from the car. His hair was spread out around his bald spot, and his white shirt was turning see-through. Had he been wearing that this morning? I couldn't remember. "Taylor," Dad said, frowning, "what happened at the front door? It's all wet. Did I leave it open before I went to work?"

I swallowed. "No, it was my fault. It wasn't left open all day. I just couldn't close it properly and then I had to dash out to get the washing in and it must have blown open and I only noticed it was open when I'd brought it in."

He sighed. "Taylor," he said, "I know it sticks, but you have to make sure it's closed! It's important!"

"I know, I know," I said. "I'm sorry, okay?"

"Yeah, sure. Just try not to do it again," he said. "In fact, I need to go to the bathroom. Could you at least mop it up?"

I huffed, trying to look more unwilling than I really was. At least he'd bought my story. "Fine," I said, drawing the word out as I wriggled out of the warmth of my blankets and retrieved the mop and bucket from the under stair cupboard.

As I worked, I let myself sink into the Other Place. I could hear the screams of my misery, from the bathroom. I'd nailed it to my fear, impaling them together face-to-face on the same iron spike. I hoped they were enjoying each other's company, I thought, smiling. They belonged together. Away from me.

And since I was free of them for now, I couldn't see any reason why I shouldn't meet up with Sam at the weekend. After all, what did I have to worry about?

I made the call.


	26. Lines 3-04

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 3.04**

The world had been consumed by fog. Visibility was down to the tens of yards – the light post outside my window was vague and blurred even with my glasses on. This wasn't some parahuman attack, it was just part of life in Brockton Bay. It was early in the year for it, though. Mulls like this usually didn't start until May, but maybe the better weather coming in from the west had kicked it off. Dad kept saying the weather was getting strange, not like when he was a kid. The scientists blamed it on all those volcanoes the Behemoth made.

Sighing, I turned away from the window. It was 07:02, and I'd got bored of lying there. I wasn't sleeping unless I had to. I'd found that by maiming Cry Baby, I could 'cut off' bits of my tiredness and when I reabsorbed it I was mentally refreshed. I still had to get physical rest, but that just meant I had to lie down and pretend to be asleep until I was sure Dad was asleep. Then I could turn my side light back on and read, or send out barbed-wire cherubs to spy on the city. It was really hard to get a glimpse of parahumans out on patrol, but I'd managed it a few times. It was a good pick-me-up.

And I could go like that for two, three days before Cry Baby got too big and strong and started trying to break free. Good enough. Better than wasting my life sleeping. Better than having nightmares every day.

Shambling off to the bathroom, I relieved myself, washed my hands, and began the skincare routine for the scars on my face.

The fog hadn't cleared at all even by the time I got around to making myself breakfast. Wisps of whiteness clawed at the windows and clung to the grass in the back yard. Even if I didn't need to sleep, even if I'd relaxed as much as my body needed, I was still tired. Tired of everything. School was a daily drudge, only tolerable because of my powers. I _needed_ this weekend. I'd probably have to sleep properly tonight, which meant nightmares. Maybe I could send the nightmares to Emma – except, no. Some of my nightmares were about things I saw in the Other Place and the sweatshop. She might use them to find out about me. I couldn't take the chance.

I yawned into my cereal.

Madison still lurked outside classrooms every so often. I didn't know what she was planning, but I was safe. I kept Isolation up all the time except when I actually was in class. I hadn't seen much of the others. My guess was that they'd drawn straws or something, to take turns on doing things to me. I hoped so, at least. That meant that as long as I avoided Madison, the others would just have to wait for their turn.

At least I'd found a few people who tolerated me, like Luci. I made sure to give them a good first impression of me. I was harmless. Inoffensive. I didn't chatter in class and get them in trouble with the teachers. And if things were helped along by having a little thing on their shoulder, whispering that I wasn't so bad – well, it wasn't like my powers were hurting anyone. Emma didn't count. She was the villain, not me. Pinning my little needle-fanged Cravings to her wasn't anything like as bad as what she'd done to me. And she'd done it for no reason at all.

Dad came downstairs. "You look like a mess, kiddo," he said, turning on the radio as he went to grab himself a bowl. "Forget to splash cold water on your face this morning?"

"I did. It didn't help. Didn't get much sleep," I said, with total honesty. "I think it's the weather. It's all… claustrophobic."

He shook his head as he sat down, music playing in the background. "We never used to get fog this thick this early in the year," he said. There was a pause. "Was… was it the nightmares again?"

I swallowed and lied. "Yes."

He clinked his spoon against the side of the bowl, tapping it as he thought. It got on my nerves. "Taylor," he said, hesitantly, "… do you want a nightlight?"

I did not pout. I would like to make that clear. "I'm not a little kid anymore!" I protested.

"I know, I know. It's just. Well. How do I put it? Maybe it might help?"

I sighed, running my hands down my face. When I pulled them away, I could see foundation on my palms. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I kept on doing that when I forgot I had it on, especially when I was tired. I never used to wear makeup. "I'll get through it," I told him. I paused, and took a breath. "But… it can't hurt," I said reluctantly. He was only trying to help, after all. I'd find a way to deal with it with my own powers. But like I had told him, it couldn't hurt.

"We'll get one today," he said. At least he'd stopped with the tapping. "You want coffee?" he said, getting up.

"Yeah. I could do with it."

Just then, the radio crackled and the song cut off midway through. Five short bleeps sounded.

"This is a Department for Homeland Security priority warning to Region 1 New England," said the speaker on the radio. It was one of the identical-sounding women who always seemed be chosen to make government announcements. They were probably selected for their ability to sound professional and reassuring even if they were announcing the end of the world. "We are upgrading the terrorism threat level from Yellow-Elevated to Orange-High, for the states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont." That was us.

"Turn it up," Dad said from beside me, nodding towards the radio on the table.

"Known threats to American national security have been sighted in Augusta, Maine," the voice announced calmly. "They are believed to be linked to multiple attacks in Vermont and Maine over the past month. The group is believed to be made up of a mix of US nationals and Canadians. Reports confirm that at least one of them is displaying parahuman powers. Citizens should not approach suspicious individuals – the suspected parahuman is mentally ill and is dangerous. Do not attempt to interact with any members of suspicious groups. This may lead them to attacking you. If in any doubt, call the emergency hotline on 3-6-9. Remember – do the right thing and dial the right side."

The kettle hissed as Dad spooned out instant coffee. "Fat lot of use that is," he muttered. "Somewhere in three states there are a group of dangerous maniacs, but we're not going to tell you what they look like. Why do they even bother sending out these kinds of useless warnings? I can tell you why – it suits their interests to keep us in a permanent state of fear."

"Yes, Dad," I said, trying to avert a diatribe. It didn't work.

He sucked on his teeth. "Who wants us scared? That's the wrong question. Who doesn't want us scared? The government wants us scared, because people don't question it when everyone's more worried about the Endbringers and terrorism and criminals. Companies want us scared, because people don't ask for raises when they're worried about losing their jobs. The press want us scared, because scary stories sell papers and advertising space. And advertising certainly wants us scared, because you can sell things to scared people who aren't thinking straight."

"Yes, Dad," I tried.

He poured the water into the mugs from the kettle. "It's what makes me laugh about people who claim there's a big conspiracy controlling society. Conspiracies? Hah! Who needs secret conspiracies when it's in the self-interest of everyone who's rich and powerful to get a scared population? Not too scared, of course. Just scared enough to stop them asking questions, not so scared that they start doing stupid things. Just scared enough to keep them buying, not so scared that they stop spending. It's the blind fuc-flipping worship of Saint Reagan. I'm surprised half the damn country hasn't started petitioning the Vatican for his canonisation."

This was getting awkward, as it always did. I just sat back and let him run out of steam, which took about as long as it took for the coffee to finish brewing. "Milk? Sugar?" he asked.

"Just sugar," I said. I needed it to help me wake up.

The fog was thinning by the time we left the house, but visibility still wasn't great. At its worst, fog could shut down half the city for days. Dad hated that, because the docks got hit worst. Even the rest of Brockton Bay got hit with more brownouts and power cuts, because the power plant out at Red Beach really doesn't like the fog. No, I don't know why. Maybe it's the moisture, or maybe it's just people not showing up for work. I was just glad it was still working, for now. There'd been only one big brownout lately, on Thursday, when I was in the computer lab. The lesson had been cancelled, and I'd gone to the library and read. The rest had been pretty brief.

At least the Boardwalk had its demisting stuff. When we stepped past the threshold, it was like stepping inside. Or maybe like stepping into a different day, because the smartfabric overhead made it look like it was sunny and clear, and the heaters took the nip off the air. Dad harrumphed and muttered something about 'wasteful', but I was just glad that my glasses weren't fogging up in these streets. I took them off and polished them. The Boardwalk was pretty busy, so I made sure to stay close to Dad as we headed to the garden where I was meeting up with Sam.

Between the fog slowing down the traffic and the walk from Dad's work, we were running a bit late. Sam was there already, along with a smartly dressed woman who I guessed was her mother. They had the same hair colour, at least.

Sam's hair had been tidied up since I'd last seen her. It used to be jaw-length and crudely-cut, like someone had gone at it with scissors. Now it was even shorter, in a tomboyish pixie cut. She had the right face for it. Hair that short would have just made me look like a boy. Of course, we had at least one thing in common – long-sleeved tops, to cover up our wrists. She was also wearing blue-tinted glasses, which surprised me. She hadn't been wearing them in the hospital. Her eyes couldn't be that bad if she'd got away without them, surely? Then I looked more closely, and realised they weren't spectacles. They were tinkerfab hudglasses.

Inwardly I sighed. I'd picked up that she was from a pretty well-off family back at the psych hospital, but I didn't realise she was outright rich. The way her mother dressed just made it even clearer. She was wearing nevercrease smartfabric, and there were little fish swimming across her blue shirt. I sighed. It looked really good on her.

I sunk into the Other Place to check her for signs of hidden evil – and yes, maybe plant some Sympathy on her for a good first impression. In there, the resemblance to her daughter vanished. Sam looked… actually, she looked better than she had in hospital. She was still burnt and frozen at the same time, but now there were little chains, each link the same bright colour as one of her pills, which seemed to be – hah – literally holding her together. By contrast, her mother had pale skin and a mouthful of needle fangs, like something from a horror movie. Her eyes were mechanical, stapled to her face, dried blood seeping out where flesh met metal.

Well. I had no idea what the eyes meant, but the mouth suggested 'vampire' or 'leech' or 'predator'. Maybe she worked in finance. Or, hell, I don't know, liked her steaks raw. Stupid useless vague Other Place.

Sam said something to her mother, and then waved at me. "Taylor," she called out. "Um. Hey."

I rose out of the Other Place as I approached her. "Heya," I said, just as awkwardly. It wasn't even because I'd just seen her as a monster chained by symbolic drugs or anything. That was hardly the worst thing I'd seen, and it was a clear sign she was getting better. I just wasn't great with people. "Um. How are you doing?"

"Better, yeah. Definitely better. You're doing okay?"

"Well enough," I said, shrugging. "Some days are better than others. You know how it is."

"Yeah. So. Um." Sam swallowed. "Weird weather we're having, right?"

"I know," I said, glad to have something else to talk about.

"Pia," Sam's mum introduced herself.

"Danny," Dad said. I shot a glance at him, trying to tell him to behave and not talk about politics or do anything embarrassing. I wasn't sure how well it worked. It's hard to convey complex sentences in glance form. I'd probably have to make a construct to do it. And I didn't think it was really important enough to do something like that. Also, possibly immoral.

We made noises about the weather and other nothing-topics for a bit, and then Sam's mum suggested that we go sit at one of the Boardwalk cafes. It had a vaguely nautical theme, and was pretending to be a traditional seaside New England place. That would probably have been more convincing if it hadn't been a chain. At least the demisting and the heaters let us sit outside like it wasn't a cold foggy day. I ordered an orange juice, and nursed it.

"You just missed the fire, you know," Sam said, leaning back in her chair. She sipped at her green tea.

"The fire?" I asked.

"You didn't hear?" she said, raising her eyebrows. "Well, I guess you wouldn't. There was a big fire in the kitchens, back at the place. I heard it was the deep fat fryer. That's what Leah said she heard, anyway. We all got herded out to the fire evacuation point and got rained on and it sucked."

I'd been lucky to avoid that, apparently. "Wow," I said. "Did anyone get hurt?"

Sam shrugged. "I dunno," she said. "But there were a bunch of ambulances showing up. I'd kinda hoped you might have seen more about it in the papers."

I shook my head. "Nothing, although I wasn't really looking," I said, rubbing my fingers up and down the side the condensation of my glass.

"Yeah, well, because the kitchens had caught fire, the food went literally straight to hell. It wasn't all that great to start with, remember?"

I hadn't thought it was that bad. It had been better than Winslow's canteen food, at least. "Yuck," I said, to show solidarity.

"Yeah, you got that right. And the fire must have damaged something because we had a bunch of power cuts. Not normal ones, I mean. I could still see lights on outside, over by the highway. And – get this! All the lights in the canteen blew, can you believe it? Like, they literally blew up. Shattered. Glass went everywhere. Some people got cut up."

Wow. "Was everyone okay?" I asked. "Leah and you and… the other two?"

Sam frowned. "The other two?" she asked. "Henna and 'Tash? Yeah, they were fine. Oh yeah, you didn't meet 'Tash. Tori got moved out almost immediately."

I sipped my juice. Oh yes, Emily had left just before I had. "No, Kirsty," I said, the name clicking after some thought.

"Kirsty?" Sam said blankly.

I stared at her. "You know? The quiet one? Who spent all her time in her room and never talked."

Vague recognition flickered in Sam's eyes. "Oh yeah. The one in the room next to me. Sorry, not too great with names. I don't think I said a single word to her, you know?" She snorted. "Nah, we were all fine. It was the old people who were eating in there."

"That's good," I said, nodding. "Um. Well. Not good-good, but at least you were all okay."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "Still, you thought it was boring normally? With no power, it got even worse. There was literally nothing to do. So glad to be out."

Well, that was something we could both agree on. "Me too," I said.

God, we'd already run out of things to say. We'd talked about the weather. We'd talked about how good it was that we weren't in a psych hospital anymore. Did we have anything else in common? What did people who weren't being bullied by three psychotic bitches even talk about? I guessed we could complain about schoolwork, but – wait, no. She wasn't back at school yet.

She looked just as stuck. "So, what do you want to do?" Sam asked, finishing off her tea. "Want to go hang out at Little Paris?"

I swallowed. "Uh," I began, "I don't have… one of those card things you need to get in or anything." She seemed really casual about the idea of getting into that submall, and her next words confirmed that.

"Oh, no problem," she said. "I've got a Gold card, so that means I've got guest passes. That'll be okay, Mum, right?"

"Yes. You know I prefer you shopping somewhere that's safe," her mother said airily, breaking off her conversation with Dad.

"Yeah, see. Come on, there's better shops down there than in the main Boardwalk. Definitely better than anything elsewhere, at least."

How was I supposed to turn that down? Without letting onto the fact that I probably wouldn't be able to afford anything in there, I mean? Well, maybe the food, although that was probably super expensive too. Maybe I could buy a single hair clip. But on the other hand, there was a bit of me which wanted to have a look inside. Dad was always talking about the inequality of society and how the rich didn't even want everyone else seeing how much better off they were or else people'd be breaking out the guillotines. It had piqued my curiosity.

The two of us made our way to Little Paris, on the edge of the Boardwalk next to Ashton Park. The streets were just as fake and full of eyes in the Other Place as they had been last time I was here. Plastic grey men and women served monsters. The cameras were everywhere, and bloodshot eyes blinked from behind their lenses. Squirming, coiling things wriggled over the billboards covered in misspelt slogans telling the world to  
**BuY bUY BUY**  
and  
**DONT WORY ABOUT THE FUTure  
WHO CARES ABOAT THE passd  
DO WHAT YOURE TOLD**  
and  
**death is the ONLY WAY to pay off the ORGINAL SIN of mankind so whatre a few more?**.

Somehow, my power managed to be even more cynical about politics than Dad.

Getting into the submall meant we had to go through the whole security process. Taking our shoes off and being waved at with metal detecting rods and walking through the tinkerfab scanners and filling out a form with our personal details and so on. Well, I say 'we', but Sam got to use the quick access checks, because it was her card. That meant fifteen minutes in line for me and another five actually being checked. I didn't see what they did to her.

She looked pretty awkward on the other side. "Sorry," she said, hands in her pockets, as we waited for the elevator just past the pickup point. "I didn't know it was like that for guests. Everyone I've been with had a Bronze at least. You should get one. It makes it so much faster 'cause they have all your details on the system."

I looked away, trying to force down the hot shame in my stomach. "I wouldn't use it enough to make it worth it," I said. "I don't really shop much. Well, I mean, apart from books and there aren't any proper bookstores down here."

Sam snorted. "Yeah, Leah says much the same. 'bout the books at least." The wood-veneered elevator arrived, and she grinned at me as we got in. "I guess maybe I'm just a magnet for bookworms?" The interior was plastered with deliberately old posters. They were all in French. It was a really subtle nod to the mall's brand.

Little Paris, like a bunch of submalls around the country, had originally been built as a shelter. Lobbyists had got the state governments, back when the Endbringers were a new thing, to build far more shelters than were actually needed. The surplus ones had been sold off to try to recoup some of the wasted money. Well, that was one version of events. The other one was that big business had talked authorities short on cash into cheaply selling off inner city shelters for commercial use, and no-one seemed to care it meant the nearest shelter might be half an hour away. Either way, places which handled expensive technology took up residence in them. That meant labs, tinkerworks, and of course, submalls.

I glanced around as the elevator doors opened. However it started, nowadays it had a very pretty Old World look. They'd clearly done a lot of work to cover up its origins – even the low ceiling of the entry hallway was masked by a smartscreen, showing a view of a sky. Not the one above Brockton Bay, though. A nicer one. I drew a deep breath. The air was clean and fresh – in fact, it tasted fresher than the city above, with a slight scent of herbs.

"So, where d'you want to go?" Sam asked me. "I thought maybe we could go to Blackmore's. That's always good. Check the screens, maybe see if they have the new MaC out… do you play MaC?"

I wasn't really listening.

Beyond the entry hall was the submall proper. Objectively, I knew it was the same size as the other shelters I'd been to in the quarterly drills at school. Despite that, it felt a lot bigger. I guess when you're not cramming thousands of school kids and teachers into this space, it goes a lot further. And of course, it's not like they were selling in bulk like regular shops. Normal stuff like that you picked up from the collection point on the surface.

Down here? Down here you had electronics shops selling paper-thin flexible tablets with more processing power than the entire computer lab at Winslow. You had fashion shops stocking high end smart fabric which could literally reconfigure itself as you wore it. You had a medical clinic advertising cloned organs and cybernetics. There was an animated billboard listing the merits of the 'Bushmaster XG-3 – the ultimate hunting coilgun'. Where normal shops had assistants, here they had genejacks – vat-grown meat robots – and the shelves were being restocked by little squat white robots.

And that was just tinkerfab stuff. I heard they sold actual tinkertech down here.

I was jealous. No, I was more than jealous. Seeing these things displayed so casually down here was… was wrong. I sunk into the Other Place, just waiting for the horrors to make themselves evident. I would find the lies they were hiding.

I closed my eyes, trying not to shiver as the usual chill crept in. It was always cold. Better than the alternative, I supposed. If the Other Place were ever hot, it'd probably be on fire. My nostrils flared. It smelt like old coins and nails. Fresh blood, not the usual gory rot. There was less mildew to the air, less wetness, but that just made the blood stand out more. There was a strange edge to it, too. Under the blood and tarnish, there was a definite smell of – I inhaled – plastic. It was the slightly stale, hot smell of a shrink-wrapped thing after the cellophane came off, with maybe a hint of ozone.

It's really hard to describe smells, you know that?

I opened my eyes. It was fake. It was all fake. Splintered wood veneers revealed grey concrete. Cracked yellow stone shopfronts were grey plastic underneath. The floor was thick with grime. Looking around, I realised it was thickest where people were. It must have been walked in. Up above head height, things were just rotting away slowly, but where people sat and ate and touched and talked, the walls and floors were caked with dried blood. In places, the trails were even fresh. Charming.

I drifted forward, peering over my glasses, taking the place in. To my left was a clothes shop, its tinkerfab garments all locked in cases. I didn't know how you were meant to try them on. Maybe they just fitted them to you. None of them had any trace of the reek. None of them had any trace of... anything. They were grey and sterile and lifeless. Of course the clothes they sold here weren't made in sweatshops. They'd probably never been touched by a human being before they were put in the display cabinet. And given that the robots on the shop floor, maybe they'd never been touched by a human at all.

God, how many actual real human beings were even staffing this place? The thought struck me as I stared. In the real word, there'd been robots and genejack meat androids with barcodes on their foreheads and automated tillers and touchscreens everywhere. Here, it was somehow more obvious. Any attempt to personify them failed. Even the genejacks were more like the furniture than the people. Their paper-thin skin flaked and peeled, showing off grey colourless muscle that did nothing to distract from the needles sticking out of their heads. They weren't the ones profiting here – they were equipment. Where did the money go?

There was a glow at the end of the hall. A beautiful, wonderful light. It sank into me, and I shivered slightly from sheer joy. I had to follow it.

I felt a yank on my shoulder, and I whirled to face a burned and frozen corpse. Of course I flinched.

"Taylor," it demanded of me. I left the Other Place, and watched as Sam's face built itself up again from the wreck it had been before. "Taylor. Literally, what's going on with you? You just stood there and then when I realised you weren't following you started wandering off in the wrong direction." Her eyes gleamed as she stared at me.

"It's just a lot to take in," I said weakly. "I… I haven't been here for ages. Um. Ever."

I got to watch a series of emotions flicker over Sam's face. She went from surprise to confusion to dawning realisation to a look of mortification. Oh God. And now she was going to be embarrassed because she had thought I was someone like her and…

"Fuck," she said softly. "I mean… um… no, really, fuck about summarises it." She cupped her hands over her mouth. "You must think I'm such a bitch and I'm rubbing this in your face," she mumbled. "I… I just didn't put it together because all my friends go here at least _sometimes _and I didn't even think that… look, I know we're well-off but… um. Sorry."

Looking at her, I… I didn't know what to feel. She seemed genuine. It was easy for people to just pretend, though. I forced myself to smile, even as I watched her face twist into monstrosity again. "It's okay," I said. I was used to pretending, too. I'd had years of practice. What did I want to do? I didn't want to do anything with my constructs. I didn't care what she said, just why she was saying it. I wanted to see _her _feelings, not give her my own. "No problem at all."

Of course. It was obvious. I exhaled the raw stuff of the Other Place, unformed and unshaped black mist. She breathed it in, and then I inhaled again, drawing it out of her. Her guilt and awkwardness and the faint feelings of nausea and stomach aches – I felt them all, burning as I swallowed them.

She was genuine. She really felt bad about it. She wasn't faking.

I almost felt like laughing despite the sickness coursing through me. If I could send out bits of myself to make other people feel what I wanted, why not send them out to feel what _they_ felt, to 'taste' them? After all, that was how the Other Place _worked_! It soaked up everything that happened, absorbing it and warping to match events. I was the one who controlled it, so I could do the same! The realisation felt as good as the chocolate-coated-opiates I got from watching powers at work.

"You aren't mad?" she asked quietly.

Returning to normalcy, I grinned at Sam, letting my glee show. "Look, it's not your fault you're rich," I told her. "Just the fact that you felt bad means you can't be _too_ much of a stuck-up bitch." I really was happy, anyway. She really was sorry. Maybe… maybe this might work out. I could tell if she was going to betray me, which meant I could trust her. And she needed a friend as bad as I did. Maybe more. I'd heard the hope in her voice when I'd called her back.

I looked around, and saw there were some free seats down the hall. I helped her over, and we sat down.

"Thanks," she said, voice shaking. "I… I just didn't think, you know, and I don't know whether it's the meds or whether it's just that I didn't think and…"

"It's okay," I assured her. There was a stall ahead manned by a genejack selling 'homemade' pastries. The sheer incongruity of a vat-grown meat android – girl android, in this case – selling things which prided themselves on being made traditionally was breathtaking. Whoever came up with that idea must have had no sense of irony whatever. "Look, if you want to make it up to me, let's go get something to eat. With lots of sugar in."

Plus, how the fuck was it cheaper to get a genejack to do that rather than just hire someone? I was so glad Dad wasn't here. He would have had kittens.

She gave me a weak grin. "Sugar is good." She frowned. "Uh, but not nuts. I can't have nuts."

I snorted. "Look at that place. It's so sterile I bet they don't even use real nuts. They're probably some freaky GM stuff. Or something grown in a vat."

Sam shot a look at me. "Nah, it says it's made traditionally," she said, shaking her head.

Well, yes, it might have said that, but they were lying. I'd seen how grey and untouched and plastic the food looked. "You're probably right," I said. "So, that's okay?"

"Yeah," she said, before adding more strongly, "Yeah. Look. Um, after we eat this, you want to go somewhere else?"

"I'm fine," I said truthfully. And I was. I'd seen a parahuman glow in here. "It'd be a waste to not take a look around. Just for a bit, you know." I sighed. "I can dream, right?"

She nodded sympathetically, swinging her legs. "Come on, then,"

As it turned out, the things from the stall actually were homemade. If you assumed the genejack was stored in this building and so it counted as its home, I mean. That had to be the loophole they were using, since it literally baked them on the spot there. The prices were pretty horrific, but Sam paid them without hesitation. She felt awful about dragging me down here, so she insisted on treating me.

It was a good thing that I was a nice person, or I could totally have taken advantage of this.

While we waited for the pastries to bake, I occupied myself with trying to catch another glimpse of the glow, flickering in and out of the Other Place. Little Paris wasn't that big compared to a surface mall, so I had a good chance of catching them just by waiting in the main hall. It wasn't as though a euphoric light would be easy to miss in a decaying plastic world of leech-mouthed men and women with rusty iron bull horns. Soon enough, I felt that happy, warm rush.

My heart sped up, and my breath hitched in my throat. It was a pure, brilliant white, its radiance draining the horror from the Other Place. If the criminal at the sweatshop had been delicate, fern-like fronds, then this was a roaring pillar of fire. Little embers flickered off it, alighting on those who stood nearby, sharing the glow with them. The woman at the heart of it was eyeless, with two horns of flame-blackened gold, but she mattered so much less than the light that burned through her skin, each muscle ablaze.

It was beautiful. It was wonderful. It was all I could do to stop myself breaking into a run, although I couldn't remember exactly why I shouldn't. Instead, I just watched her burning pillar endlessly shed its embers, making the world a better place. There were other, more subtle glows – hints of an electric blue coming from something at her waist, and a sparkling amethyst glimmer from something around her neck. They only added to her beauty, I thought, trying to swallow. My throat felt like a desert, and my palms were clammy.

I could have stayed there forever. I could have, but I didn't. I managed to force myself away from the bliss, though it hurt to return to the normal world, filled with lies and empty of that light. There was something I had to do. I had to see who she was. See her 'real' face so I could find her again. So I could send a porcelain-faced cherub after her and bask in the light.

Back in reality, she seemed so much more mundane. I almost pitied everyone else. So much of what the Other Place showed me was horrible, but those few moments of beauty almost made it worth it. With her fire hidden, the woman was revealed to be a blonde girl around my age. She was tall – though not as tall as me – but unlike me, she actually had a figure worth speaking of. She was wearing a clearly expensive tinkercloth outfit, and carrying a branded bag.

I could recognise her, though. I'd been reading up on the local heroes and villains as part of my research, and she was one of the ones with a public identity. Victoria Dallon, who went by the codename 'Glory Girl'. She was about my age, and went to Arcadia – obviously. You didn't see heroes in a shithole like Winslow.

Apart from me, obviously.

My mind whirred, riding a wave of euphoria. Yes. She was part of an independent hero group – obviously under PPD regulation – but not part of the Wards. I knew her name, I knew what she looked like. I even knew what her _power_ looked like. I'd be able to find her again with Sniffer, I was sure of it. And then I could drop intel leaks with her. Yes! She'd be able to make sure they got to the police, and they'd trust her much more than an anonymous tip off. After all, if I just had a cherub drop evidence on someone's desk, it might get ignored, or passed over. They might even be a corrupt cop who'd make the evidence vanish. I was lucky the sweatshop worked out so well.

If a hero handed it in, it'd get attention. The right kind of attention. And if she met up with other heroes, I'd be able to see them too and-

Sam snapped her fingers in front of my face. "Uh, hello? Earth to Taylor? You zoned out again. Um… is that, like, a _thing _with you or… what?"

I said the first thing which came to mind. "I think it's a side effect of the meds."

"Oh." She fell silent. "Yeah. Mine have been giving me stomach cramps, and I'm putting on weight. It fucking sucks." She thrust a paper bag into my hands. "Here's your muffin. Don't let it go cold. The chocolate on the inside is gorgeous when it's melted."

The muffin was the product of an abusive and unfair system where the rich got richer and used meat androids when there were unemployed people everywhere. Still, even Dad would have had to admit it was a really good muffin.


	27. Lines 3-05

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 3.05**

I spent Thursday afternoon sitting in a dimly-lit classroom with no teacher. The joys of education. A brownout had come right in the middle of a video we'd been watching for Parahuman Studies, sending the CRT all fuzzy. Mr. Li had gone off to print out some worksheets in his office and left us alone, with instructions to read our textbooks.

I preferred Mr. Li to our last PS teacher - he actually kept the class under control - but even I wasn't actually doing the reading. There was actually someone standing at the door to warn everyone when he was coming back, so we could look busy.

It was funny, but I always used to hate the brownouts. They disrupted lessons, which just made it that much easier for those three to harass me. Since I'd moved classes, they didn't bother me nearly so much. Luci just chatted to her friends, and left me in peace to stare out the window.

That was what it looked like I was doing, at least. Actually, I was watching TV. A pair of my cherubs hovered behind the glass, barbed wings fluttering. They held up a flickering screen between them, showing images captured by a third cherub, one I'd modified after my trip to Little Paris. Its head had been replaced by one of those compound-eye 360 degree CCTV cameras I'd seen there, and it had more old fashioned cameras for arms.

I'd called it Watcher Doll. It was pretty useful - it was as good at finding things as Sniffer, and better yet, it seemed to have some kind of influence over technology. It could track Dad down by the sound of his voice over the telephone, and when I'd been watching the news I'd been able to send it to look round the room where they actually did the filming. That was freaky enough, peering around the desks where the newsreaders sat and hearing them read out their lines a fraction before they hit my TV at home.

Even freakier was what happened when I tuned my bedroom's old TV to no station and just let white noise and static fill the screen. Watcher Doll couldn't _find_ anything from that – but it could fill the gap with 'false channels' made from the things it saw. Not on the Other Place version of the TV, either – it projected them on the actual, real TV.

That was what I was doing rather than sleep. Night after night, I'd tune the TV to static, and then send out Watcher Doll to spy on stuff.

The night before last, I'd hit the jackpot. The news that day had mentioned a shooting of a whole family in broad daylight, just north of St Jude's. The chief suspect was one Charles Haythorn – aka 'the Haymaker'– who they said was the leader of a gang in the Ormswood neighbourhood's hooverville. They hadn't said he was a parahuman, so that probably meant he wasn't – just having a villain name didn't mean much. Criminals had been using nicknames way before heroes started showing up with government codenames.

I'd found him. I knew where he was hiding out. Watcher Doll had found him in front of the TV, sprawled out on a couch with his feet up, and Sniffer had shown me where that was on the map. I could phone it in, but what if they traced the call? I could send a tip off as Panopticon, but what reason would they have to believe it? Sure, they'd believed me about the sweatshop, but I'd had evidence, then, and they were probably getting tip-offs all over the city about this guy. Plus, if any of the police were working for his gang, it would be a lot easier for one man to run away than an entire factory to be moved.

I sighed, and stared across the barren and cracked asphalt of the parking lot. It didn't look all that different in the Other Place. Maybe it was a bit dirtier. It was at times like these that I considered signing up with the PPD officially. It would be nice to have people who'd actually listen to me. But they'd probably object to how I'd been spying on people to try to find criminals, and that'd get in the way of me being a hero. And that was what I was going to be. A hero.

Yes, it had to be me. I was going to take him down, today.

Well, not literally take him down. He was a big guy with tattoos and while my power did a lot of things, 'allow me to go face to face with a crack-selling gang' was not one of them. I would go to his hideout under the cover of Isolation, take pictures on a disposable camera, and then drop them off with Glory Girl. I'd get to stop a criminal and earn some trust with a real hero, she'd get the credit, and the city would be a safer place. Everybody won.

Well, apart from Charles Haythorn, but that was sort of the point.

Something nudged me in the ribs. Luci was glaring at me with her countless glowing eyes. "What?" I asked, shedding the Other Place. She went back to being a girl with coffee-coloured skin, still glaring at me. I was pretty sure it was a judgemental look. From what I'd overheard of her chatting, she judged people a lot. She was wearing the same purple and white t-shirt she wore a lot. She had a purple plastic wristband, too, so I guessed she liked purple.

"You zoned out," she said. She had one of her intricately decorated notebooks in front of her. There was an elaborate abstract tree on the open page, drawn in lots of different colours of ink. It looked like one of those old 3D films with the funny glasses. I wished I could draw like her. It'd be cool to be artistic. It'd also help me plan out my creatures before I made them.

"Just bored," I said.

She snorted. "Come on," she said. "But what about the fun of reading?"

I'd read it all already, of course, trying to see if it had anything useful for me. It didn't. It was all boring stuff about the formation and reformation of the Protectorate - how American superheroes helped stop Communist villains from taking over South America and the Reagan assassination and the attempted coup in 1997 - it might as well have been copied straight from our history books. And they were really, really out of date. Mine had a publishing date of 2000, so it was printed back when the Simurgh was still a new thing.

I snorted. They had a few pages on it, talking about how that thing had descended from the moon in the solar eclipse of '99, and its intentions were still unknown. Welcome to Winslow, everyone, where the school textbooks are so old they were written when President Dole was in office. "I read it already," I told her.

"Yeah, me too," she said. She was spinning a pen in her fingers, somehow managing to keep it going. I couldn't do that, even before my hands got mucked up. "So. I was thinking. You know we've got a group project for PS coming up, right?"

"Yeah," I said.

"You got a partner yet?"

"No."

"Want to do it with me?" she asked casually, pen still twirling.

"Why me?" I asked, instantly suspicious.

Luci shrugged. "You actually read the books and don't talk all the time. That puts you _way _ahead of the last person I did a project with. Like, I like Becca, but I'm never working with her again." She squared her jaw, her stare very nearly a glare. "But if you try to freeload or make me do all the work, I won't put up with that kind of shit."

I had to choose quickly. I hated doing that. But when it came down to it… well, Luci was a hard worker. I saw her in the library most lunchtimes, doing homework when I was reading in a corner, protected by Isolation. And I hadn't shared any classes with her before I got moved, which meant I didn't have any pre-existing grudges against her. On the other hand, she could be working with those three to ruin my grades. It'd be just like them to set something like this up.

There was one way to be sure. I inhaled, shifted my senses, and then released the cloud of swirling Other Place material. It sunk into her and I let it sit for a second, before I re-inhaled it. The welter of feelings sunk in, and I tried to pick through them. Curiosity, some irritation, a low-level of anger at what felt like everything – but no hate or nasty snide laughter or sense of deceit. That was a relief. It wasn't obviously a trap, though I'd still need to keep my eyes on her. "Okay," I told her. "I hate people who don't do their work too. People used to steal my homework all the time."

She made a disgusted noise. "Well, yes. Some people're scum."

More like most people, I didn't say out loud. "Yeah," I said.

The rest of the day passed without incident, apart from Madison lurking outside my Maths class at the end of the day. She was pretty persistent – and good at getting to the classrooms before we got out. She'd clearly memorised my timetable, which was… um. Yeah. Creepy. I breezed past her, wrapped in Isolation, and left her to wait.

That might be a problem, I realised to myself. Like, maybe it was starting to get implausible that she was missing me every single time. What if she got suspicious that I had a way of hiding myself from her? She'd try to use that against me, without a doubt. Maybe I'd need to be seen leaving, but next to Luci or someone that I could probably trust to side with me if she tried anything.

But that was a problem for later, not now. Hands in my pockets, I wandered out of the school gates. I had a few hours before Dad should be getting home, and I'd told him that I was going to be out at the library because I needed access to internet and textbooks for my homework. I did, but I'd actually finished that work during lunch. I hadn't wanted to, but that just meant I'd needed to nail my apathy – a pale grey worm I'd named Tedium, with a mask shaped like my face – to the wall. I'd got so much done without it holding me back. I'd need to remember that trick.

Isolation's human-faced butterflies were a rusty cloud, brushing other people away as I got on the bus. I'd just checked which school bus was headed in the right direction, since it meant I didn't have to pay a fare - that neighbourhood was pretty far out of my way. The driver glanced over me as she checked everyone's passes, and I smiled to myself. Even if someone could have seen me, I was just another student getting on a Winslow bus. I sat down at the front, and let everyone else file by as their minds refused to notice me.

God, Isolation really was wonderful. I didn't know what I'd do without it. Sure, it made people ignore me and leave me alone, but I'd been alone for years. I could handle it. All it meant was that I got to choose when to be alone. When I let it down, I was engaging with the world on my terms. And it was working out! Over the past week, I hadn't been bullied by anyone, and I'd made… um, acquaintances? Was that the right word? Or maybe sort-of-friends? No, I didn't think I could trust them enough to call them friends. But Sam and Luci were certainly acquaintances.

Speaking of Luci, she was on this bus. I considered showing myself and talking with her, but that'd just raise questions about what I was doing here and I didn't want to have to answer them. She got off just short of Ormswood, which surprised me. I wondered where she lived – or if she even lived around here. I'd overheard her talking about the after-school job she had with her uncle. Maybe she was heading to that?

But that was just a minor distraction. Sniffer's wordless whispers and increasingly excited guttural noises told me I was getting closer and closer to my destination. I let myself off at the next stop, and walked the rest of the way.

I kept my eyes open and focused on the normal world, for once. This wasn't a safe neighbourhood. At all. If I hadn't had Isolation, I'd have been very worried. Even with Isolation, I didn't like the idea of being around here when night fell. Intellectually I knew it was silly, but I'd had years of warnings about places like this. I didn't see anything to suggest they were wrong, either.

There was a crazy old lady smashing bottles on the street. She was wrapped in so many layers of clothing that she was nearly spherical. The broken green glass was scattered around her, gleaming in the late afternoon light. This was obviously a regular thing for her, because the chain link fence where she sat was decorated with broken glass. She must have been gluing it to the wire, because I couldn't see anything tying it there. Her frizzy greying hair stuck out from under her beanie at all angles. She had a cardboard sign propped up behind her, which said

**GENESIS 8:21**  
**HAS BEEN BROKEN**  
**LEVIATHAN DROWNED NY**  
**THE LEVIATHAN WILL**  
**DROWN THE EARTH**  
**ONCE MORE**  
**GOD WILLS IT**

I swallowed. There was a dead cat on the other side of the fence, behind her. It was maybe a few days dead, because even from this distance I could see the flies. She didn't seem to mind the smell, which must have been horrible. Everyone else was just walking past her, ignoring her and her sign and her smell and her broken glass.

Maybe she was just a feature of the neighbourhood. It looked like that kind of place. Dilapidated buildings were rotting where they stood, old redbrick apartments falling into disrepair. The parking lot at the corner of the block was occupied by hooverville shacks, old cars and trailers reinforced with corrugated iron and plywood and plastic sheeting. They couldn't have been pleasant to live in during winter – it's cold up here in Maine. Every wall was covered in graffiti and every tree was dead. White gulls roosted in their bare branches and missing person posters plastered their trunks. A little girl in a white t-shirt stared out from all of them, smiling a gap-toothed smile. I'd have looked for her with Sniffer and Watcher Doll, if I didn't recognise the posters from a year or so back. They'd found the body.

Next missing girl, I'd make a difference, I promised myself.

One of the gulls swooped down in front of me, and began to eat a discarded cigarette stub. I edged around it. I wasn't sure if Isolation worked on animals. That could be a problem if I ran into another guard dog, but right now I just needed it to work on humans. A blonde girl in a white hoodie sat on the low wall at the entrance of the tower block I'd pinpointed. I walked right in front of her, but she ignored me and kept sucking on her red lollipop. All was well. With a breath, I sent Sniffer out to confirm that my target was at home.

He was.

That meant it was time to get into costume. I have to confess, I was grinning to myself. I'd worked out a way to get changed quickly, and it was _so cool_. I did honestly consider using the nearest phone box. It was such a cliché, but I still wanted to do it. Unfortunately, when I checked it, someone had clearly been using it as a toilet, and the insides were covered in stuck-on cards for prostitutes and sex chat lines. There was no way I was going to go into the Other Place in there. So I found a nearby alley instead. It still smelt faintly of urine, but 'faintly' was a big improvement over the phone booth.

I held my arms out straight, like I was being fitted for clothing, and slipped into the Other Place. The practice paid off. My cherub managed to teleport my coat right onto me, first try. I pulled my balaclava and gloves from its pockets and put them on, and I was unrecognisable. A second trip brought me my gas mask and hat. The whole process took less than thirty seconds, and most of that was adjusting the mask.

I could do TV-style fast transformations! It was so awesome – and changing back was even faster, since I could just dump the stuff in my closet. I didn't have to go around with my costume hidden in my bag or anything like that. I'd like to see anyone else get changed so quickly. They'd need some kind of transformation power or fast-deploying tinkertech armour, and that was cheating, anyway.

Some of the graffiti in the alley – the bits that weren't dedicated to derogative comments about women or implications that someone preferred the company of other men, at least – confirmed that I was in the right area. Here, the posters for the missing girl had been covered up with Merchant gang signs. Haymaker's gang was a Merchant gang.

The name seemed like a sick joke between a bunch of drug dealers – 'we're just respectable merchants'. The group was basically a franchise gang, like… like McDonalds or something. Smaller gangs paid them for selling rights in territory they controlled, which meant they were part of the Merchants. They had a bunch of parahumans and lots of ex-military cokeheads, so they could go in and wreck any clients who didn't pay up, or anyone who made trouble for them. Dad dropped them into his rants every so often. He said they were one of the biggest gangs in the country if you took all the franchises together – all over the East Coast down to Florida and as far west as Chicago – but they weren't an organised force, compared to the triads or the Mafia.

That meant this place was probably his branch's territory, rather than a safehouse or even just some random place he'd found to hide out. Understandable, but not too bright.

Masked and gloved, I stepped in through the main entrance, past a woman crooning to a crying baby. The elevators weren't working, so I took the stairs. The walls of the stairwell were bare, flaking concrete. They were rotting in the damp, and I could see rusty rebar was exposed like bone where the bigger chunks had fallen out.

I may have panicked, slightly, at the thought that I might have accidentally slipped into the Other Place. Maybe. Just a little bit. But no, it just looked like this all the time. The Other Place was much, much worse.

The walls were caked in thick layers of dried blood, and bristled in places with hypodermic syringes. Rot crawled down my throat, and I gagged. As I climbed, I found pockmarks forming patterns in the gore that looked like faces, and an oozing pool of blackness on the second storey landing. Someone had died in this stairwell. I kept well away from the mark they'd left. I could _feel _the apathy and loneliness, cloying against my face like a damp cold wind. It steamed with something that felt like Isolation. That person had died all alone, and left nothing but a scar in the world, in the Other Place.

It felt fresh and strong and… and hungry.

I shed the Other Place and got the hell away from that landing. This entire place seemed surreal. I thought back to the submall. I'd visited it just last weekend, but it didn't belong in the same _century_ as this place. How could they both exist in the same city, in the here and now?

I slowed down as I made it to my target floor. There was a tattooed guy stationed as a watcher, sitting on a couch that had been dragged to face the stairwell. He didn't even give me a second glance. They'd created some kind of open area by ripping out most of the doors. I guess they needed the ventilation – the air was thick with smoke, and it wasn't just tobacco they were smoking here. It smelt metallic and chemical and sort of like… like a mix of paint thinner and cat piss and swimming pools. They probably wouldn't be getting their deposit back.

… also, the fact that I could smell it through my gas mask was sort of alarming. I was pretty sure that it was meant to stop stuff like that. So either something in it wasn't working, or I didn't have it put on properly. Maybe it wasn't meant to be worn with balaclavas.

There were two women in the kitchen area, wearing stained lab coats and doing things with frying pans and baking soda. There were also some guys, hanging around on beaten-up couches playing bleeping video games consoles. They were armed, and didn't look like dumb kids who waved pistols around for fun. They more resembled some of the younger veterans Dad worked with in the union. Their tans meant they'd probably been discharged from the peacekeeping operations down in South America. They were meant to be leading the war against drugs, but I'd heard a lot of veterans ended up as addicts themselves. It looked like this was the case here.

Dad said it was pretty pointless to send troops to police villages and patrol borders, since there was so much cocaine and heroin being smuggled back along oil-shipping routes. There were even rumours about parahuman smugglers who could teleport drugs into the country. I wasn't sure if I believed them but they were pretty plausible, right? After all, I could have done that, if I was a criminal.

Shaking my head, I fished a disposable camera from my pocket and got to work. I'd stashed two in there, more enough to document this place. I shuffled around to avoid bumping into anything, but no-one noticed the masked and coated figure wandering around, taking pictures. I made sure to get pictures of their faces and of the equipment they were using to do things with drugs. The smell in the kitchens was horrible. I wasn't sure how they could stand it. And wasn't it sort of weird that the two people in the kitchen making drugs were women? Like, what was up with that?

They didn't do anything stereotypically awful while I was watching. The men didn't beat up the women cooking the drugs. They sat here and played on their console. One of them was sprawled out on a chair on one of the balconies, reading a book. He must have been cold out there, but at least the air would be fresh. Either way, I got a picture of his face, and continued on my way through the apartments.

I'd filled up my first camera by the time I found Charles Haythorn. He wasn't actually on the first floor I checked out. He was right at the top, with several levels between him and the drugs operation. His apartment looked pretty normal, and wasn't connected at all to the gang below. That made sense, up to a point. He was a wanted man, so the police would probably raid his known hide-outs. I'd have hidden in an entirely separate building, but maybe he just wanted his gang to be able to tell him if the police showed up?

This place had a door. I called up a porcelain doll-cherub, and had it open a rift. I reached through and unlocked the door from the inside. I eased it open, then locked it again from the inside. Perfect. I smirked, to help me ignore the nervous squirming in my stomach. That expression turned into a wince as I saw the state of the apartment.

It was so… _male_. There were empty beer bottles sitting around by the door, and there was a distinct odour of unwashed clothing and sweat. The wallpaper was peeling and yellowed. I could hear a man's voice from elsewhere in the cramped apartment. From how he was talking, I guessed he was on the phone.

But when I got into the room which doubled as a kitchen and living area there were children's toys on the floor. I poked my head into where the voice was coming from, and there was a crib next to the small curtainless window. And yes, there was Mr. Haythorn, rocking a small child against his shoulder with a phone in the other hand.

"I know, boss, I know," he said, sounding tired. "It just went totally wrong. Jack's twitchy and he thought the guy was going for a gun and then he shouts 'he's got a gun' and then the guy sticks his hand into his pocket. So I shot him. He had a gun, right? What kind of dumb fuck does something like that when he's at gunpoint? And then the kid got hit. That was just bad fucking luck. Yeah, the guy had a gun. Jack wasn't seeing things. Like, not just twitchy. It's a nice piece – looks 'fab. I'll get it to you, in the same drop off as the phone."

What does Daddy do after he murders someone and has to hide? Apparently he takes the chance to spend some quality time with his kid. I frowned. He wasn't showing any guilt for what he'd done. Well, then I wouldn't feel any guilt for what I was about to do. I'd feel sort of mixed if he'd been torn up by guilt and – like – he was just doing it to feed his kids or something, but no, apparently not.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," he said, in response to some unheard question. "I know the deal." A pause. "Yeah, I won't fuck it up."

I wound my disposable camera on, and got a nice picture of him standing there on the phone, child in hand. Unfortunately, he didn't say anything more, but he was reporting to someone. His boss in the Merchants, probably. If that was how they were organised. It would make sense. I stepped aside to let him pass, and lurked by the door as he went to rummage around in the fridge. He returned with peanut butter for a sandwich.

I had evidence of where he was. That was really all I needed. I should have left at that point, just gone and handed it in. But I was curious. I wanted to see what he was up to, and maybe find out who this 'boss' was. Keeping away from him, I made my way through to his bedroom. Maybe I'd find something useful here.

The double bed was unmade, and there were clothes on the floor. Picking my way over a discarded bra, I decided that whatever woman was living with him wasn't any tidier than he was. There weren't any great horrors waiting for me in the Other Place, beyond nameless stains on the bed. There was no gun lying in a pool of black blood, handily revealing itself to be the murder weapon.

I rummaged carefully through the chest of drawers. Bundles of scrunched up clothing, but no hidden diaries conveniently full of paperwork. There was a gun hidden in a sock, but its Other Place reflection was dull and rusty, so it probably hadn't been used recently. I sniffed it. It didn't smell like it had been fired, either. I put it back and resumed my search. My stomach was churning, and I was trying very hard not to think about what would happen to me if I got found in here. Isolation might not always work. It hadn't failed yet, but I just knew that if I came to rely on it too much, I'd wind up running into someone whose power could see through it.

I was searching through the closet when I found the safe. It looked like one of those ones they had in hotels, with a keypad. It was locked. Pursing my lips, I glared at it.

Well, first things first. I should find out what was in there before I tried to open it. I thought back to what I'd done in Monarch, the shop selling the stuff from the sweatshop. I closed my eyes, and dove deeper into the Other Place, imagining Sniffer and the way she saw the world. When I felt the pressure on my eyeballs, I knew I'd done it right.

I kept my eyes closed. It wasn't like I needed them anymore. I knew the shape of everything around me, as surely as if I was touching it. I couldn't open them, really. If I did, I'd see the chains, and right now I couldn't afford to be overwhelmed by that sense of… connectedness. Even with them closed, I had to Iean against the wall and wait for the wave of vertigo to pass. When I felt like I could proceed, I squatted down by the safe. I could feel the shape of it, feel the shape of the inside of it, and I could feel the shape of the contents.

Rolled-up bits of paper held together by rubber bands? Probably bundles of bank notes. Sealed packages. A shape which could only be a handgun.

Jackpot. Literally.

I'd never made a porcelain-doll cherub when I was looking at the world in this way. It didn't look the same. Well, it didn't _feel_ the same. Whatever. Instead of a creepy doll with barbed wire wings, all I could sense was a distortion in the iron-grey, toneless world. It was still roughly the same shape, but it was like looking at a hole in the world. The flat greyness of the room warped where the cherub floated, leaving a black metallic gap that just happened to be shaped like a creepy doll.

What the hell, power. It was saying that my creepy constructs didn't… look creepy in their creepy vision, when I used it? I couldn't think of a word to describe that, apart from… well, 'creepy'.

Oh well. I'd need to play around with that later. Maybe try looking at the world through the eyes of something else apart from Sniffer. I'd already bet that things like Sympathy or Phobia saw the world through their linked emotion. That didn't matter right now, though.

"Doll," I whispered to it. "Help me get the money."

Maybe I should have been more precise, but in my defence, squatting in a murdering drug dealer's apartment and peering at a black hole I wanted to steal a gun for me, I was sort of a teeny bit freaking the fuck out.

Seeing my power from this angle made it obvious what was going on. The doll-shaped hole did… _something _, it twisted, and suddenly my sense of where everything was started screaming that things didn't make sense. It was like an optical illusion. From one angle, my hands were inside the safe, right next to the cash. From another, they were still attached to my arms, separated from the safe's contents by metal and empty space. The world's greyness was all knotted up, black veins twisting together like fibres so… so here and over there were right next to each other, without passing through the intervening space.

My head spun and my bones started to ache, so I shed the Other Place before vertigo overcame me. In the normal world, I could see the hole in the world without any discomfort. It was just a portal, a window leading straight into the inside of the box. There were bank notes and a gun stuffed in a carrier bag along with a slim fancy phone, and the packages turned out to be – what else? – cocaine in transparent plastic sealed bags.

Well, it could have been some other kind of white powder, but unless he really had to keep his sugar supply safe, it was totally cocaine.

Kneeling here in this stale-smelling apartment, the noise of its owner and his baby in the other room, I had a choice. I could go ahead with what I'd planned to do. I could take photos of it

Or I could take it. I could stop him selling the drugs, stop him making use of the gun again, and stop him from using the money for criminal stuff. I could make a difference here and now. I wouldn't be relying on the state to stop bad things happening. I couldn't be sure they would. Even if they did go to arrest him, what would happen if he'd already moved this on? There'd be drugs being sold on the market which I could have stopped. From what I'd heard on the phone, the gun here was probably the one he stole from his victim. It'd just be sold on and used. I wasn't thinking of the cash, except as a way to punish him. He didn't deserve to keep it.

I made my choice.

"Cherubs," I breathed out several floating doll-faced constructs. "Take it. Take it all. Hide it in my closet."

I made a second check with Sniffer's eyes, to make sure there was nothing left in the safe. There wasn't. That also showed me strange little trails in the grey world, like wrinkles or those lines in the sand you get on beaches where worms live. I shook my head. It wasn't the time to think about that. It probably meant that Sniffer could detect traces of whatever it was my cherubs did to the world.

Then I just let myself out of the apartment, hands in my pockets. My lips were bleeding again, and I wasn't feeling great, so I left the costume on. I didn't want to risk my power stressing my body any more until I was feeling at least a little better. I just got on a bus headed in roughly the right direction, and sat there, staring out the window listlessly.

I felt grey and empty. I'd planned out what I was going to do, over and over in my head, and it had just been such an anti-climax. Things had basically gone exactly how I'd imagined, apart from the way I'd confiscated the drugs and money and the gun from him. It… it just felt like there should have been more drama. I certainly didn't want to be caught! But I'd just walked in, unseen by anyone, done what I needed to do, and then left.

Goddamnit. Why didn't I feel heroic? I'd stopped drugs and a stolen gun being sold on. I took off the gas mask, and let my balaclava'd head rest in my hands. It was probably just me moping as I crashed from the adrenaline. I'd been on edge in the apartment, nerves on fire even if I was invisible. By comparison, everything just seemed dull, almost sullied.

Pulling the disposable cameras out of my pockets, I stared at them. They were cheap tourist cameras, but they had the evidence documenting the gang floor and Haythorn's apartment. I'd need to get them to Victoria Dallon. Yes. That's what I'd do. I'd feel better when I'd done the right thing. And I could see her Other Place glow again.

I was already feeling less rotten once I got off the bus. It was a fifteen minute walk back home, but first I had a cherub take my costume home. On the way I stopped off in a 24-7 and bought myself some chocolate and a can of Coke. I couldn't attract the attention of the girl behind the counter, until I checked the Other Place out of irritation and realized I was still surrounded by rusty butterflies. I'd forgotten to drop Isolation.

The sugar helped. I run into problems with low blood sugar, and it had been a long time since lunch. I got home, called Dad to say that I was back and I'd got my homework done, got reminded to check that the heating was working – it was – and then headed up to my room.

First thing I had to do was to dispose of the cocaine. I didn't want it. No one should be able to make use of it. Just for a moment, I considered leaving it somewhere it'd be blamed on Emma, but no. That'd be too far, it'd be wrong. Instead, I went for another walk, found a storm drain some way from the house, and had a cherub move it from my closet into the drain. That was probably technically a crime. Littering and improper disposal of chemicals or whatever. It was for a good cause.

Back home, I made myself a hot chocolate, sat cross-legged on my bed, and unbundled a roll of bank notes. Then I started to count. There were twenty ten dollar notes here. Two hundred dollars. Just like that. It was… it was unreal. Hands shaking, I secured the notes again, and then went to get some paper so I could keep count of how much I'd actually taken.

By the end of it, my haul was just over three thousand dollars.

That was a lot of money. Really a lot. I didn't think I'd ever seen that much money in one place before, outside of movies. The notes weren't very clean and they were crumpled, but they were real. They had the right feel. And when I held a few of them up to the light, I could see the security thread. If they were fakes, I couldn't tell them from real notes.

What the hell was I going to do with three thousand dollars? Wait, scratch that. What the hell would Dad do if he caught me with three thousand dollars? Wait, scratch that. What the hell would Dad do if he caught me with three thousand dollars _and a tinkerfab gun_? Because that was what it was. It was all futuristic and high-tech and sleek, same as the phone, but it didn't have the glow in the Other Place which'd mean it was 'tech. It probably cost more new than the money I'd taken.

I let my head sink into my hands. What the fuck should I do?


	28. Lines 3-06

****An Imago of Rust and Crimson****

**Chapter 3.06**

"Glory Girl. This is Panopticon. Stand by for your briefing," I told a cherub with a microphone for a head.

Her image was on the old TV in my room. I sat on my bed in my pyjamas and dressing gown, setting my plan in motion. I'd sent Watcher Doll to her room, to spy on her. Glory Girl – it didn't feel right to think of her as 'Victoria' – was sitting there, on her bed. She was like my mirror image, except she had dark clothes on under her dressing gown and she was listening to a police scanner rather than watching an old TV.

It made me feel more certain about what I was about to do. We weren't so different. We both sat up at night seeking out crimes to stop. She was just prettier, richer, famous, and had a support network and a power that didn't force her to see horrible things all the time.

Maybe this was going to work.

She flinched as my voice came out of the scanner. "Panopticon?" she asked, looking around wildly. "Who is this? I swear, if this is some kind of prank-"

"This is no prank," I told her. I'd pinned away my fear, so I could say this without my voice shaking. I checked the notes in front of me. I'd prepared lines for this. Some of them were straight out of TV shows like Fortnight or PPD: DC, so they should sound pretty authentic. "I am Panopticon. I am speaking to you on behalf of Project Crucible, a project intended to provide unconventional solutions to domestic criminal and terrorist threats on US soil. You have been selected to receive information on a domestic threat due to psychological profiling. It is believed you will make good use of it."

The screen of the TV was getting bigger and bigger, becoming less like a window and more like a door. The blond girl on the screen continued looking around. "Are you spying on me?" she demanded. "And… who the hell are you? I've never heard of Panopticon."

I focussed, and sent a cherub to check that the box I'd sent to her front door was still there. It was. "Glory Girl," I said, "you have been monitored to ensure that you do not associate with criminal elements, and your background has been vetted. A package has been delivered to your front door. Please collect it immediately. It contains information as to the whereabouts of Charles Haythorn, who is wanted for two counts of murder. This information is something the police want." I paused. "It is believed that-"

"Look," she said scornfully, "you're clearly some stupid little girl who thinks she can pretend to be someone important. You're not. You can't do anything. You don't even matter. Just… fuck off, okay?"

And then she reached out and turned my TV screen off as the smell rolled in.

I lay there in blackness. Red hot pains stabbed through my body, and my own blood was a warm trickle over my cooling skin.

I could almost ignore the pain, compared to the other violation. The bugs were back. They were crawling into my wounds, working themselves bone-deep, and I didn't have the strength to fight them off and all I could do was lie there and I was useless and hopeless and weak and couldn't do a thing to save myself. I couldn't scream anymore. Not that it would have mattered. No-one had come even when I had screamed.

The scent of rot and old blood filled my nostrils, and I knew I was dying. My blood was seeping out from every wound, and where drops fell they just became more bugs and they tried to push themselves back in – only they were wrong, wrong, wrong! I couldn't do anything and I was going to die in here and no one was coming and I couldn't even move to hammer on the locker door.

Something forced its way into my mouth.

I woke with a scream. Sitting bolt upright in bed, I shivered uncontrollably. The sickly smell of night-sweat filled the room. It was dark outside, streetlights providing the only illumination, but it was blindingly bright compared to the locker.

Sinking forwards, I massaged my brow. No. Dammit. It hadn't worked. Phobia must have escaped during the night. I'd reached the point where my tiredness was overcoming my ability to beat down Cry Baby, so I'd had to sleep. I'd thought that trapping my fear in the bathroom would help, but I wasn't strong enough to hold her for the whole night. She must have crept back into my lungs while I was dreaming.

I rubbed my eyes and tried to reassure myself. Look on the bright side. At least this way I'd got _some_ sleep without nightmares. I shifted to the Other Place, and exhaled Cry Baby. It was weak, so I'd probably had basically a good night's sleep. That meant I'd be okay for another three, maybe four days. Two at the absolute least.

All the high-tech tinkerfab luxuries in that mall, and there hadn't been an over-the-counter drug to get rid of the need for sleep. I'd have blown everything I had on stocking up.

I got up, washed my face, took a shower, and then returned to my room. It was Saturday today, which meant I was free of school. I sat down again on my bed, hugging my knees. My real contact with Glory Girl hadn't gone like that nightmare. It had worked. More or less. I didn't think she'd entirely believed me, but she'd gone downstairs and checked outside the front door and she'd brought the information up.

A little bit of me was disappointed that she'd given the information to her parents. I sort of wanted to watch her crashing in through the window and dragging Haythorn out of the window by his collar Alexandria-style. She'd totally done the responsible thing, but – I sighed, being responsible you didn't get results as fast. From what I'd heard of their discussion, they didn't trust anonymous tip-offs from mysterious sources. They'd reminded her – several times – that other heroes had died when tip-offs had turned out to traps.

Damn villains, ruining it for everyone else.

Glory Girl hadn't told her parents about Panopticon, though. That gave me a little warm feeling inside. She'd just said she heard a knock at the door when she was getting changed for bed, and found the package there. She might not really believe she was being secretly recruited by a government agency, but maybe she was at least willing to keep an open mind?

Now I just had to wait until they took the murderer down. The heroes knew, so I was sure they'd be on it soon, given the man-hunt going on. School was torture yesterday, and not for the usual reasons. I'd had to literally force myself to pay attention to lessons. Nothing I could do would have helped, and I couldn't keep an eye on Charles Haythorn constantly. I did really want to see the police raid and watch the heroes working with them, but they hadn't done anything by the time I'd fallen asleep last night. I guess they were still developing the photos.

That was my fault, kind of. One thing I needed was a proper camera. No one could take me seriously if I was making anonymous tip-offs with disposable cameras. That was what today was for. I was going into town and making some useful purchases. I had money, for the first time in my life, but it wouldn't be morally right to spend it on things for myself that is, Taylor-me, not Panopticon-me. It wasn't profiting from crime if I spent it all on stuff to catch more criminals.

So I had two things I needed to do today. First, I'd get some hero supplies, including – and most importantly – a Polaroid camera. And then I was going to find a place where I could stash all my stuff. A place which wasn't under my bed. I had considered buying a digital camera with the money, but even the cheapest ones were like eight hundred dollars for a shitty model with hardly any memory, and even then I'd need to print the pictures out. Dad would definitely notice if someone else started routinely using the printer. I'd need to be careful. I'd already used it a couple of times for Panopticon letters.

It was still dark, so took an easy start to the day. I just lay back in bed and reread bits of It until the sun was properly up. Then, when I heard Dad moving about, I got dressed and went to have breakfast.

He was still in his pyjamas, and looked decidedly sniffly. Great. My powers might have let me do all sorts of strange things, but they didn't give me any immunity to the common cold. It'd be really embarrassing if I started sneezing in the middle of giving Glory Girl another secret briefing. To say the least.

He looked up from his mug of coffee and paper with bloodshot eyes. "Are you going out somewhere?" he asked.

"Just for a walk. And then I have some school things I need to get," I said, grabbing some bread from the bread bin and putting it in the toaster. I wanted cereal, but I wasn't going to sit too close to Dad if he was under the weather.

"You didn't say anything yesterday," he said, warming his hands on his coffee.

I shrugged. "It's nothing big," I said. "I need some more pens and a new notebook."

He looked up at me. "Do you want a lift?" he asked. "I'll be heading in myself later."

"I'll be fine, I promise," I told Dad. I laughed. "It's not like it's anything important. I just need some things." This was totally one-hundred percent true. I wasn't looking for any trouble. I wasn't even planning to investigate any particularly troubling things I saw in the Other Place, although I'd note down their location for later poking.

"I need to get more exercise, and walking is easy. I promise I won't go anywhere dangerous. The Boardwalk, maybe head down to Printers Square if I have money left over. Rummage through the book stores, you know." I added the last thing as if I was just casually mentioning it. Hopefully he'd think that was the reason I didn't want to be driven there. Dad wasn't bookish. I certainly took after Mum there.

"I just think it's a shame for you to be wandering about on your own – not to mention it's not entirely safe." He paused. "You know I don't think the area around Printers Square is the best neighbourhood."

"I'm fine," I told him. "You've taught me enough to be sensible – and I go there plenty."

"You could go ring up Sam and do something with her," he said, as if the idea was only just occurring to him. I doubted that.

"Dad," I protested. "She's probably busy with homework and-"

"So you don't know?"

"I'll be fine," I insisted, sticking my hands in my pockets.

"I do worry about you," he said. "You have a chance to make a new friend, from a different school. You should try to work at it. Don't let it slip away just because you don't want to take the first step of calling her."

I scowled. "I just need to get some things and then I'll head to the library to get homework done," I said. I huffed. "I'll see if she's free tomorrow?" I tried, as the toaster pinged.

He shook his head fractionally. "Fine. I just don't like you wandering around on your own. And keep away from the National Guard posts. They're not safe – another girl was attacked. It was in the papers this morning," he slumped grumpily in his chair, only to rise immediately. "Actually, I need you to pick up a few things on the way back," he said, already writing me a shopping list.

"I can't carry shopping bags. It hurts my hands," I tried.

"Well, it's a good thing you're wearing a rucksack, Taylor," he said, glancing at me and raising one eyebrow. Any attempt at sternness was ruined when he sneezed.

Damn. He had me there. I buttered and ate my toast while a shopping list and money was forced on me, and then got out of the house and away from my plague-carrying Dad.

Once I was far enough from home, I fished a scrunchy from my pocket and pulled my hair into a ponytail, then wound it around itself and pinned it as a rough and messy bun. I checked my reflection in a phone box. I didn't usually wear my hair like that, so it'd be harder to ID me, and they might not even notice it was curly if it was pinned up like that.

Still, it wasn't exactly a great look. Curly hair is a pain to begin with, and wearing it up was even trickier. I was getting more used to that style, because I had to tie it to fit it under my balaclava, but I was facing the unwelcome fact that I really needed to cut it shorter if I was going to spend more time running around in a disguise. I didn't want to. I was proud of my hair. It was distinctive. Of course, that was also why it was a problem.

Despite what I'd told Dad, I didn't head to the Boardwalk. Instead, I aimed for Printers Square, the old shopping district from before the Boardwalk saw its boom. I knew I was in the right area when rows of large, blocky printing houses came into sight. They'd given this area its name back in the 1800s, but then the printers had moved closer to the paper plants. So they'd been turned into department stores, but then the Boardwalk had been set up on its own cheap, ex-industrial land. Now they just loomed over everything.

Printers Square had gone into terminal decline. It was a neglected area gone to seed, full of furniture shops and second hand stores and one-man places owned by people who couldn't afford the rents anywhere better. I sunk into the Other Place. No real major changes here. I couldn't see any deaths, or anything like the horrible, living stink of the sweatshop. One of the shops had strange mould growing from one of the windows above it, and there was a pool of dark water spilling across the square, but those were minor compared to the things I'd seen in the tower block.

That made me feel a bit better. I got quite a lot of my books from the old bookshops around here. They were the kind where the owner is basically running the place so he (and they were all run by men) has somewhere to store his books. He sells some on the side, but only when he really has to. It was nice to know there weren't any obvious, major atrocities around here.

Also, I was getting kind of inured to the Other Place if I could even think that. I sighed, sticking my hands in my pockets. It was hard to remember how much I'd been freaking out at first when I'd just been seeing uncontrollable flickers of it.

Shaking my head, I went looking for a camera shop. There were a few here, actually. The kind of man who ran second hand book stores seemed to have a cousin who was more interested in photography. That was the perfect place for me to shop for stuff to help with my hero career. Hell, I was helping the local economy. Using my liberated crack money.

Some of the stores had been converted into housing. They'd just bricked up the shopfronts, leaving the old door in place. One of the blocky buildings was now a church, with a large banner up over the door and a large cross attached to the water tower on top.

**PROVERBS 15:3 -The Lord God Sees All, Good And Bad  
MATT 10:34 - Fear Not! God Provides The Path To Forgiveness** .

The camera shop I picked had a faded smell of chemicals and cigarette smoke. The old man sitting behind the counter looked like he'd been in the trade since the camera obscura, and his smoking had left his white hair stained faintly yellow. There were lenses in a protected case behind the counter, along with a sign saying "FOr teST shoots, pleas ENquIre".

I didn't feel entirely safe here. This looked like the kind of place which didn't see many women, and even fewer girls. Still, I'd chosen it for a reason - it didn't have any CCTV cameras. Which actually didn't help my feelings of nervousness at all, but it'd make it harder for anyone to investigate me. I glanced at the mud-smeared figure with lenses for eyes standing behind the counter, and sent a piping silver flute-worm of Sympathy his way. Then I shed the Other Place and started browsing, leaving it to work its way into his head.

"Can I help you?" he asked me, voice reedy.

"Um, hi?" I began. I didn't need to pretend I was nervous. My voice was shaking _anyway_. I just needed to give him a plausible reason. "Sorry, I was looking to get my boyfriend a camera as a present? I don't really know that much about cameras, at all, but he mentioned wanting one. I want to get him one of those ones which instantly print the picture."

He rose, and slowly made his way over to me. From the look on his face, his joints were stiff. "Mmm hmm," he said. "Well. I'm not a fan of them. Their image quality is lower than a _proper_ camera," he said that last part with obvious contempt, "and without negatives, there's no way to replicate the picture. Not to mention the restrictions on image size, the inability to blow a picture up for printing purposes and of course," he said as if letting me in on a secret, "you can't have the pleasure of developing your own photos."

I swallowed. Oh dear. Sympathy seemed to have made him determined to save me from my ignorant non-photo-enthusiast ways. "I don't know much about cameras," I said, "and that's… um, well, I think he doesn't either. And you know how much of a hassle taking your camera to a print shop is, and…"

It took some time, but I managed to persuade him that I perhaps wasn't ready to start off adding a dark room to my house and maybe a Polaroid camera might be a baby step towards getting me into the hobby. I couldn't really tell how much of his enthusiasm was down to Sympathy and how much was that he was a chain-smoking camera obsessive who stank of developing chemicals. He was happy to see women get into photography, and kept calling me a 'pretty young girl' when he did so. It was kind of creepy, but also sadly flattering.

I wound up leaving with a two-hundred dollar camera he'd sold me for one-eighty, as well as thirty dollars of film. That was forty five pictures – they'd had a three for two offer on the fifteen dollar packs. My skin crept at the idea that each instant picture normally cost a dollar. Photography was apparently an expensive hobby. No wonder the old man preferred normal film.

Well, I had money to spare, and I needed the instant film. I wandered around some other places while I was here, and picked up a new flash light, then a first aid kit - I didn't want to get injured, but it would be better to be prepared. Then I grabbed a pair of black trainers, so I wouldn't have to wear white shoes in my costume. Finally, I picked up a wilderness survival kit. I smiled as I checked the content list of my new 'Cold Climate Kit – As Used By The Army'. I wasn't sure how useful some of it would be, but that was one great thing about my power - I didn't need to carry it with me. And if I ever needed… uh, a plastic spoon or four candles or a pocket knife or a signalling mirror, it'd just be a cherub away.

That had been a productive few hours. However, it made finding a place to stash my stuff even more pressing. And I was hungry. I found a place selling sandwiches, and sat down out of the wind. It was picking up, blowing in off the Atlantic. It smelt of the port. Which was to say that it smelt of diesel fumes, metal, and rotting seaweed with a hint of sewage.

I wished I hadn't picked tuna sandwiches. It didn't help with the general nautical odour.

I'd set aside the rest of the day to find a place where I could stash my stuff. 'Under my bed' and 'in my closet' weren't viable long-term solutions. All it'd take would be Dad deciding my room looked like a pit and he'd find my gear the moment he starting tidying it. Even more pressingly, he'd also find my liberated crack money and stolen gun. Sure, I could hide them in the basement or up in the attic, but that'd have the same problem. I couldn't predict when he'd decide to go and rummage through the house to find something.

I'd had a look along the route to and from school. There were a load of abandoned buildings in Brockton Bay, but the problem was that if anyone could just move in, they probably already had. The moment someone else had the same idea they'd stumble across my stash. So my problem was that I was looking for a place which was hard to find. It was difficult by definition.

Instead, I'd started looking _down_. There'd been a really interesting TV show last fall called Ruin Explorers. It had a camera crew going through the ruined bits of cities. Some of the cities were basically abandoned, but others just had a neglected block or two - it was creepy how fast nature had reclaimed those places. There were actual trees growing on top of some of the skeletal New York skyscrapers. They'd even had divers go down to look at the pale fish swimming in the flooded subway.

One of the things I hadn't realised before that show was how much people built on top of themselves. It was especially bad for East Coast cities, the seriously ancient ones. After hundreds of years of building and rebuilding, they practically had a fossil record. Brockton Bay was one of them, and it was packed with underground spaces. They were invisible to anyone just wandering the streets, but I had my powers. When I looked blindly through Sniffer's eyes, I could see them. Or feel them, anyway.

The basements of the old Printers Square factories were massive. Some of them still had rusting printing machinery down there, decomposing in the dark. Others had been adapted by the shops for their own storage. I flinched as I headed south along Pulp Street, suddenly realizing there was a river running under it. An entire river, concreted over so no one even knew it was there! I could even feel sewage pipes and water pipes, a web of little rivers in their own right. There were old coal tunnels connecting buildings under the road, and basements which had been knocked together to form underground halls.

It was amazing. Sniffer could reveal so many hidden things, stuff I'd never known about. Stuff no-one knew about, probably, apart from a few boring officials at the city planning department. I'd bet some of these basements would be a surprise to their owners. Some of them didn't even have stairs any more. It was well worth not being able to see "normally" as I walked around..

Embarrassingly, I sort of forgot what I was doing. Just… just finding all these things, all these secret spaces felt almost as good as seeing a hero in action. It didn't have the same raw rush, sure, but it was something about my powers which felt _good_. Honestly, I needed that kind of pick-me-up.

My eyes were aching from omnidirectional immersion when I found it. I'd wandered for maybe an hour and a half, and my feet were starting to hurt, but then I felt a huge, hollow expanse under me. I almost stumbled, like someone walking out into unexpectedly deep water, but caught myself – this could be it. I'd lost track of where I was and the Other Place wasn't great for picking out landmarks, so I returned to normal to look around. Everything was so bright and blurry and… and at some point I'd stopped being weirded out by the deeper parts of the Other Place, the ones Sniffer saw. I wasn't sure when.

At least I hadn't had to wear glasses when I was doing my scouting. I fumbled for them in my pocket, and stared out over a parking lot, mostly empty. I remembered this place, somehow. A gust of wind caught my hair, blowing it into my face, but I ignored it, trying to dredge up old memories. Yeah, I thought, that was it. There had been a municipal swimming pool here years ago, hadn't there? I went here a lot as a kid. Yeah, that was right! That advertising billboard over there - it used to be the sign for the pool. They'd just covered it up with layers upon layers of posters. And that fresh-looking apartment block – it was where the tennis courts and parking lot must have been.

Strange, what you can forget, isn't it? I used to get taken swimming here by Mum or Dad to keep me quiet. Both me and Emma, actually. I'd learned to swim here. I looked around the parking lot again, more closely this time. There was a clear line separating old tarmac from the new stuff. They'd extended the lot over the ground where some of the old buildings had been. Which meant… I squinted, orienting myself. Yeah, that apartment block had been built where the flumes used to be. And that building there wasn't new; it had been part of the pool complex, even if it was now a car dealership.

I shivered in the wind and stuck my hands on my pockets. I actually already knew why this place had shut down. It had been when I was… seven? Eight? That sort of age. I'd heard Dad's complaint about a big municipal sell-off back then trying to raise cash and cut spending, and about how the city had been totally fleeced. The pool must've been sold off and shut down. Then they'd rezoned the land.

Which meant the hollow space below me must have been part of the old swimming pool and gym and so on. Maybe that was why this was the parking lot? They'd built on the bits which didn't have all this basement stuff, but they'd just bulldozed the main complex. Something to do with the foundations, maybe. I wasn't an architect.

A thought occurred to me, and the wind suddenly seemed colder, the noises of cars even louder. I knew a way to get down there. I could make my barbed wire angel and have it carry me.

No. I wouldn't. I couldn't. Not… not unless it was an emergency. Not just for exploring.

Okay. What _did_ I want to do? I paced the parking lot, putting my thoughts in order. The barbed-wire angel was like a bigger version of the porcelain-doll cherub. They had some obvious things in common. The cherubs could carry small objects about... but they could also open holes I could reach through, to other places.

Could my barbed-wire angel do the same? I wouldn't let it carry me around, not again, but could it open up a hole big enough for me to step right through?

I reached the end of the parking lot and turned, shivering as I paced back into the wind. I remembered how it had felt to be carried by the angel. The cold had reached every part of me, right into my organs, right into my thoughts, and it had been the least of it. Worse had been the… absence. No light, no sound, no feeling – not even any time to measure the journey by. I hadn't even known if my body still existed.

Reaching through a rift, though, felt nothing as bad. It was cold, yes, and sort of numbing, but... it just felt like the Other Place. I was fairly sure that was how my constructs moved things about – they somehow pulled them into the Other Place, and then pushed them out elsewhere. The Other Place seemed to have some weird connection with distance. Sniffer saw the holes my cherubs made like… like those pictures scientists showed when trying to explain black holes and portal powers on TV, with the world all warped and twisted around them. So there was some kind of link to the creatures of the Other Place and that kind of stuff.

Stopping by a tree near the lot's low wall, I found an angle that put me out of the wind. I bit my lip. Maybe it wouldn't feel as bad even if I stepped all the way through? If I just used the Other Place as a window, a hole, instead of going into it fully. I wouldn't let the barbed-wire angel carry me again.

So. I swallowed. Time to test the theory. I took a few deep breaths to try to psyche myself up. I needed to be using Sniffer's eyes, so I could feel the underground chambers. Then I needed to make a barbed-wire angel, and have it open a rift I could walk through. And I needed to actually step through myself.

Steps one and two would be the easy bits.

I peered past the tree to make sure no one was looking at me. It was the middle of the day, but the parking lot was less than half full and I wasn't drawing any attention. There was a teenage couple not too far way, perched on the low wall itself. They were making out - noisily - so they probably hadn't even noticed me, but I got away from them anyway. I really didn't want to see the hormones they were probably polluting the Other Place with. I crossed over to another corner of the lot, behind a bulky green recycling bin that blocked the line of sight from most angles. I exhaled Isolation just to be sure. The clatter of its human-headed butterfly swarm let me relax, reassured me I was safe.

I'd bought a flashlight today. I'd known I'd probably wind up exploring dark places, but I hadn't expected to use it quite this soon. I'd wanted to be prepared, though. I didn't like the dark. Not recently. Not after the locker. It made perfect sense to make sure I had a light with me, anyway, and with my powers I could always get this one. That was why I'd focused on quality – this was a solid metal thing, the sort of thing you see on cop shows. It'd probably work as a baton in emergencies. Crouching down, I unzipped my bag and took the torch from its box, flicking it on and off a few times. It worked just fine, and I held it tightly. It wasn't like it would help in that place… in what would happen if this went wrong, but it made me feel better to hold it.  
Time to start.

Using Sniffer's grey, flat vision, I made a barbed wire angel. It looked just like my cherubs had, a black warped hole in the colourless world this time shaped like a gaunt figure with skeletal wings. I thought it was looking at me, but I couldn't tell. I could only feel it, as a hole in the world.

"Angel," I whispered. "Do what the cherubs do. Tear open a hole, down to the place below." As I spoke, I brought to mind how that underground area felt, how it was shaped. "Don't carry me. Tear it open, so I can step through."

The angel-shaped hole reached out, and slashed at the world. The greyness stretched and warped like a heavy weight on elastic, and then it tore wide open, revealing an even bigger black distortion under the grey. Then the blackness cleared and sharpened into an opening, a door leading down a thin corridor. The edges and walls were the same warped, distorting black, and suddenly there was that double-feeling I'd had with the cherubs. I knew the area I wanted to reach was below ground, straight down, but it was also right in front of me, down the passage. I nearly laughed out loud. It had worked.

I rushed forward on a wave of elation, and regretted it instantly. It was like forcing my hand through a thin layer of ice over a frozen pond – a moment's pressure, and then bone-numbing, stabbing coldness. The world was ahead of me and the world was behind me, but it wasn't here. It wasn't where I was. I didn't _know_ where I was. My eyes ached from the blackness, the warped space Sniffer saw, but I couldn't stop using its eyes. If I did, I'd see everything around me with normal senses, and that might be worse. I clung to that conviction, tottering onwards. It was only a few steps, but it felt so much longer. When I left the angel's corridor I staggered and nearly fell, shivering like a leaf.

Behind me I could feel the worm-trail that the angel had left behind, even after the corridor closed itself. I was sure it could open it up again, the same way cherubs could with their windows. The same moment, I realized I was definitely where I wanted to be. I could feel the old walls around me, and a ceiling above, and the shapes of cars and trees above _that_, and… something around me, a layer of the same warped blackness of the corridor. It was clinging to my skin, coating me like tar or glue or dried old stagnant blood and no! I would not think like that! I musn't.

I tried to convince myself it was just residue from the rift, but I still felt unclean. Skin crawling, I shed Sniffer and collapsed, hugging my knees. That hadn't been pleasant. Better than when I'd been carried, because I wasn't literally throwing up, but I still felt sick and cold, like I had the flu. I guess my body didn't like doing things with the angel. I wasn't sure if it was just that moving bigger things stressed my body more, or if the raw nature of the Other Place wasn't healthy to humans.

Maybe it was both, I thought, and rubbed my forearms against my knees, trying to warm up.

I'd mostly stopped shivering by the time I felt able to move, so I looked around, sinking into my power. The only light was the circle of my flashlight, dancing as my shaking hand scanned left and right. I could taste blood in my mouth, and forced myself to swallow. I guessed this must have been a gym or a studio or something, but now it looked more like an underground carpark. They'd torn up the carpets, leaving just bare tiles and concrete, scattered with things fallen from the ceiling and walls. There were still some yellowing posters pinned up, and I checked them out

**oNE LAST nighT  
cLOSING DowN  
say GOODBYE  
THIS is tHe eND oF  
QUIK FIT JiM'S gYm**

When I shed the Other Place, nothing changed. The broken ceiling tiles were the same. The rusty exposed pipes they revealed were the same. Even the poster was the same, except it was properly capitalised.

That almost felt like a sign. There was nothing _wrong_ here. There was no secret truth to ferret out, no dreadful lie exposed every time I really opened my eyes. Not down here. It was a crumbling, pitch-black cavern, but it wasn't lying to me. It was just old and abandoned and… forgotten. So many of the things I saw in the Other Place came from people. Emotions, and secrets, and the horrible things they did to each other. There was none of that here. Everything was just the same.

This was somewhere I could be alone. It was somewhere I could keep things hidden. It was perfect. …Well, almost perfect. I swallowed as a thought stirred. I'd really like to find some other way in and out of here. Not the angel, not again, not so soon.

I began to poke around. It wasn't cold down here. It was just… cool. Neutral. In fact, as I edged my way through the lightless, bare rooms, I realized some of the walls were even a little warm. There had to be something giving off waste heat next to this forgotten basement level, like maybe a boiler room for one of the apartment blocks. A lot of the old buildings in Brockton Bay – like Winslow, which got really cold in the winter – had bad insulation.

The place had been gutted. That much was clear. A few desks had been left lying around – no, I realised, they'd been bolted onto the floor – but everything which could be salvaged had been taken. My feet echoed loudly. The noises of the city above sounded muffled and warped. I could hear the rumbling of the cars on the roads. Sometimes there'd be deeper groans and creaks. I didn't even know what they were, but I didn't like the sound of them.

I stepped through the next door and looked around, my flashlight following my glances. A pale girl stared back at me from my right. I leapt back with a scream. My heart was pounding in my chest like a drum and by breath was rasping. I couldn't see her too well but there was a figure behind her and how many were there and how big was this room and what the hell was she doing down here exploring the place with a…

…of course, it was my reflection. Once I'd finished with my near-heart attack I felt like a complete idiot. I just stood there in the gloom, gasping for breath and hating myself for making so much noise. My screams had sent plaster dust flurrying down from exposed parts of the ceiling, and pretty soon my gasping turned into coughing. I had to step back while I waited for the dust to settle.

Now that I was calm, I could ignore the reflected-reflections that stared back into my flashlight beam. This room was a dance studio, with the double mirrors and the bar on the wall. I hadn't been the ballet sort, but Emma had. Images of me cascaded out as far as I could see on each wall, fading into darkness at either side. I paused as though looking at one of them. Someone had scribbled on the mirrors in black marker.

**12/12/03 THE LAST DANCE**

There was something below that, scribbled in another hand,

**if youre reading this add your name and the date**

There were no entries. I managed to resist the urge to add the missing apostrophe. Barely.

The barely-settled dust was making my eyes water and throat itch, so I left the dance studio and resumed my hunt through the abandoned underground area. I hit the jackpot when I found a small locker room. It hadn't been stripped - everything was bolted to the walls. The lockers were all open, and best of all, they were those small sports complex-style lockers, so I could look at them without so much as a flinch. There was no way someone could force me into that. No way without a hacksaw and maybe some kind of… no! Oh God, stupid imagination.

Have you ever tried to get a brand new Polaroid camera out of its box in pitch darkness with only a flashlight to help? Most people haven't. It was pretty hard. But I managed it eventually, and it was similar enough to Dad's ancient one that I didn't have much trouble with loading the film. After getting two cherubs to move my liberated drug money and the tinkerfab stuff into the most intact-looking locker, I took the picture.

It turned out pretty good, actually. Everything was nice and clear, and the way the flashlight picked up the dust motes in the air looked kind of artsy. I grinned to myself. Maybe I could camouflage my pictures as some kind of school project, so Dad wouldn't think anything of them even if he did rummage through my stuff. I'd just need to keep them in a ringbinder marked 'Art Project' or something. I took a few more pictures of the other stuff I moved down here, and one of the camera itself in the mirror.

Screwing up my face, I decided to leave my costume at home for now. It was dusty down here, and that'd be obvious on the dark fabric. No one would respect a superhero with a costume covered in dust. It just wouldn't look right. If I was ever going to hide it down here, I'd at least need to find some way to hang it up. Maybe I'd need to tidy up a little area for myself. They'd probably turned off the power, but there was always the chance it was still running. And even if it wasn't, there had to be a way to get it back on, right?

But not today. I'd been down here for – I checked my watch – about an hour. I needed to get going. Not least because I was a little bit worried that I only had the one flashlight, so if that stopped working, I'd be stuck down here in the pitch black. My stomach churned at the thought. I'd be trapped down here, alone in the dark, with no-one to hear. I couldn't even risk that. I needed spare batteries before I came back down here, and probably a whole other light-source. Maybe I'd get some of those long-life glowsticks and hang them up around the place. I could even get one of those ones that ran on bioluminescent bacteria – you were supposed to be able to just refill those with sugar solution.

I hurried back to where I'd come in, and had the barbed wire angel reopen its corridor. This time I managed to sit down before I fell over, stumbling out into the blindingly bright parking lot. I didn't feel up to walking back, so I found a bus and rode it to the centre of town, then caught another one headed back home. Leaning against the window at the back of the bus, enjoying the vibrating warmth of the engine, I started to feel better. I also took the chance to brush most of the dust off my clothes. My hair was a mess. I needed to wash it, unless I wanted Dad to ask why I looked like I'd been decorating a tomb.

Yeah, I really needed to clean that place up if I was going to spend more time down there. And also wear a hairnet. Maybe – I snorted to myself – maybe I should get one of those hand vacuums. I'd give it a good dusting, like a maid.

The idea was just so ridiculous. Although I actually really should, if I was going to use it as a base. Urgh.

Then it was time to step from the bus and dash around the supermarket, grabbing the things on Dad's crumpled-up list.

"You don't look so good," the Asian woman behind the counter said. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I'm fine," I said. I wasn't actually fine. I had a headache pulsing behind my left eye, my wrists were itching, and although I'd recovered a little from stepping through the rift a second time, I didn't feel great. I let the main stuff go through the checkout, paid, and then went back and got some Tylenol separately. I _knew _Dad would want to see the receipt.

Of course, he wasn't home when I got back. I unpacked the shopping, took a Tylenol with a glass of water, and then headed up to my room. That had been a productive day, I thought, rubbing my aching wrists. I'd achieved just about everything I'd wanted to.

Just to check that it worked, I got the photo out, and took a deep breath, then exhaled a cherub. "Bring me this camera," I ordered, showing it the picture I'd taken of it in the mirror in the dance studio.

The eyeless doll face nodded once, and vanished. I counted. One. Two. And then it reappeared, dropping the camera on my bed. Good. I sent the cherub to return it, and then turned on my TV, tuning it to static. Then I settled down on my bed, and sent Watcher Doll to find Charles Haythorn.

The image that formed on the screen was… a morgue. I'd seen enough of them on TV to know what it was. The camera focused on a bodybag. Mercilessly, Watcher Doll zoomed in, closer and closer, until I could see the nametag.

It was him. Dead. In the morgue.

All the air forced itself out of my lungs. What had happened? What had I missed? I grabbed for my radio, and flicked through stations until I found one of the local city radio stations. Of course, it was playing music, but it was almost 4pm and they'd have the news then. I sat there, heart pounding like a drum, sending out cherub after cherub to look for… for something. Anything. And most of them found nothing because I didn't know what I was looking for and even when I tried to send them to his house they couldn't find anything and…

Then came the bleeps on the hour. "It's four in the afternoon and you're listening to South Maine Public Radio," said the calm female voice. "The lead news story is that Charles Haythorn is dead, and it's all your fault. Yours personally. He's dead because of you. You could have chosen to do it another way, but you wanted to feel like you were a cape and let your ego get the better of you."

My heart was beating so hard it felt like I was having a heart attack. I was going to be sick. This… it…

Other Place. Yes. Of course. Radio broadcasts were warped there. I laughed nervously. Yes. That was it. I rose out of the warped reflection of my bedroom, and the woman's words changed, even if her tone of voice didn't.

"… the murder suspect was killed in a shootout with the police this morning, after being tracked to a tower block in the Ormswood neighbourhood of Brockton Bay. Early reports indicate that he had taken a woman and her child hostage, who were hit in the crossfire. Medical teams attempted to revive them, but both were pronounced dead at the scene. We're still waiting for an official statement from the police, but off the record officers have told us that-"

Hostages? How had he managed to-

No. Oh no. No, no, no.

I wanted to deny it. The world blurred, and I blinked my stinging eyes furiously. It couldn't be true. My stomach was turning somersaults and I gripped my aching hands together. Hoping. Praying.

But I'd seen it. The place he'd been hiding out. The woman's clothing scattered on the floor of the shared bedroom. The crying baby he'd been trying to comfort.

Not hostages. Not hostages. Family.

The Other radio had been right.

It was all my fault.


	29. Lines 3-07

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 3.07**

I lay in bed curled up in a ball under the covers. I hadn't bothered to take my clothes off. My vision was blurred and my heart was hammering in my chest. I had to do something. Anything, just to stop feeling like this.

I tried telling myself I couldn't have known. It was the police's fault. They'd been on the raid, not me. I hadn't told them to shoot two innocents. I never wanted this.

But no matter how I justified it, I couldn't deny the truth. If I hadn't tipped the police off, they wouldn't have found him.

If I'd done more, if I'd waited longer, if I'd found somewhere else, somewhere other than his home, the police could have gone for him without his family being in the crossfire. But I hadn't. I hadn't waited, I hadn't done more research. I'd been so _happy _to be helping and just like that, everything had turned to ash.

Ash and rust and rot. Just like my power showed me. I let out a bubbling sob. Why was I surprised that everything went wrong? I just saw everything as corrupt and decaying and worthless. How could a power like that help people?

No! I didn't believe that. I couldn't. I had to show that I could make things better. That even if my power showed all the filth and the horror hidden under the surface, I could make things… less bad. I'd seen places which weren't as bad! I'd stopped the sweatshop! I knew I could make things better.

It didn't matter how I tried to persuade myself. My thoughts kept spiralling down. I felt like I was sinking deeper and deeper. The paint on the walls flaked away, and I found myself in the Other Place. I didn't really care. Not really. The Other Place didn't change the world. Normal people might not see the filth around them, but in the 'real' world ordinary cops could shoot two innocents and – then what? Did they feel guilty about it? Or did they just go home at the end of the day, congratulating themselves on a job well done. My vision wavered and blurred through my watering eyes. Would they even be punished for it? At all?

My mind ran in circles, always returning to that simple fact. Two people, two innocent people, were dead. And they'd still be alive if I'd been smarter. If I'd done something different.

I had to set things right. Make things better. Make up for this. But how could I, if I couldn't be sure if I was even doing the right thing? What if I just made things worse? What if more people died because of me?

I couldn't function like this. I couldn't cope. I couldn't do anything. I didn't really choose to make a construct. I just exhaled, and out rushed all the horror and fear and guilt that I didn't want to keep inside anymore. The black smoke burned my throat and I coughed and spluttered, tasting rot.

I didn't feel any better. In fact, now I felt ill, on top of everything else. But I hadn't crippled the thing yet, had I? It took a solid minute before I could twitch aside the covers and see whatever horror I'd produced now.

Empty eyesockets gazed down at me. They weren't wounds – this thing had never had eyes. There was just blank skin there. Her cheeks, though, they'd been slashed with a knife so she looked like she was crying. She had a cage around her mouth – the kind of thing they put on criminals to stop them biting - and was wearing deep crimson robes. Her clawed hands were clutched around a rusty, unpainted crowbar.

"St-stop it!" I commanded, trying to stop my voice from shaking and failing.

She growled at me. I thought it was a growl, at least. It was a wet, reverberating sound that came from the back of her throat. Maybe she was laughing. I shivered anyway. My constructs weren't normally very vocal. The fact that it was making a sound – I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all.

Cruel Justice. Yes. That was what I'd call her. She was cruel and blind and she was my guilt. She told me I'd done something wrong. Something I felt was wrong, anyway.

"N-no," I muttered. I screwed my eyes up, imagining the chains that would stop her from doing what she was doing to me. "No. I'm… I'm going to make up for it! It wasn't my fault and I'll still g-go out and make things better!"

She growl-chuckled at me, and swung her crowbar toward me, almost experimentally. I flinched, but I didn't give in to the implied threat. It felt like trying to wade through mud, but I pushed and pushed until iron chains slammed shut around her, dragging her down, and the weight on my mind lifted. It was numbing, but it was better than feeling the crushing guilt.

This freedom wouldn't last forever. I needed to act quickly, before she got free. I rolled out of bed, glancing down without a hint of remorse at the monster kneeling before me. Should I leave her here? No. It was my weight to bear. I inhaled Cruel Justice. She burned at my lungs and made me splutter, but I had more important things to worry about.

It wasn't my fault, but I had to set it right. It was the only way I could live with myself when Cruel Justice was free, and I couldn't keep her chained up forever. And since I couldn't bring the dead back to life, I just had to do it _properly _this time. I needed to find and catch a murderer. Tonight. And this time, it wouldn't go wrong. I couldn't just leave it up to the police.

I shed the Other Place and dried my eyes on my sleeve, mechanically, ignoring my smeared foundation. I had this strange nagging feeling, like there was something else I should be doing, or something I was forgetting to feel, but I wasn't sure what it was. No time to sit and think, though. I needed to find a new target, so headed through to the computer in the study.

I only had so much time to do this. I looked out at the window. It was drizzling down, although it looked like heavier rain had passed, and though it was still light it was only an hour or so until sunset. Why was the stupid computer being so slow? If anyone tried to call home, they'd find that the line was busy. I sat drumming my fingers as I waited for it to boot up, and then waited more as the modem made its dialling-up racket. was my destination.

Search… dropdowns. I considered. Homicide had to be the worst. Complexion, height, weight, gender? I… uh, wasn't entirely comfortable filling those in. I didn't care what they looked like – I just wanted the worst criminal. I'd go down from the top. City – Brockton Bay, of course. I wasn't going to head down to Portland. I probably could, via a barbed wire angel if nothing else, but there was no need to go that far when there were so many criminals to catch here. I clicked search.

Then I waited thirty seconds for the page to load. 112k modem? Hardly. Though I guess there was a photo for everyone on the page, so it wasn't surprising it took so long. I started working my way through them. The first one was Charles Haythorn marked as 'deceased'. I flicked past him, the nagging feeling strengthening for a moment.

The next three had red 'captured' banners under them. Why, thank you, website. Why did you show me them, again? A few, I couldn't find. Watcher Doll just returned without an image, and Sniffer just vanished. Maybe the pictures weren't good enough quality, or maybe they weren't near technology or… I didn't know.

I was getting angry by the time Watcher Doll succeeded. A wave of static washed over the speakers and a video popped up on the computer, behind the monitor's glass, made filthy in the Other Place. Lew Chong, wanted for two counts of homicide and suspected of links to other assaults and robberies. He was a short, stocky man with bad skin and a nose that looked like it had been broken and set badly. The website said he was part of the White Lion Association. That looked about right, unless he had a very good reason for the lion mask slung over the back of his seat. There were other men around him who had that same sort of hard-bitten, hard-drinking look. They were playing cards around a table in a smoky bar.

Keeping that image in my mind, I dashed back through to my bedroom and dug my map out from under my bedside table. I brought it back through to the computer room, and exhaled Sniffer. Her long-limbed bulk filled up most of the space in the tiny study, but I needed her.

"Sniffer," I whispered. "Where is he?"

She looked down at me with her overlarge eyes, looked at the screen for a few long seconds, and reached out with one extended finger. She placed it on the map and I marked it with a sticker. Down south of the Docks, in Brockton Bay's oversized Chinatown.

… uh, not that I meant that there were too many Chinese people around. But after New York got wrecked, refugees got spread up and down the East Coast. Something which had used to be a few streets became a whole neighbourhood overnight. The neo-Nazi street gangs really didn't like that place, even if the people living there had accents that tended more toward New York than China. The White Lions returned the sentiment. Of course, they also hated the Japanese immigrant Boumei, and… like, super-hated the triads who were mostly made of Chinese people, rather than the White Lion Chinese-Americans.

Well, I wasn't doing it because he was Chinese, I thought. I'd just picked the first person I'd found from the website. And he was suspected of two murders. I had to remind myself that it was only 'suspected'. Even if he was a member of a gang, that didn't mean he was necessarily a murderer. I wasn't there to punish people. That was the police's job. I was just helping them to do it _properly_. I was going to bring him in alive.

And to help me do that, I made myself a coffee, scribbled down a few notes of prep, and then went to talk to the second necessary component of my plan. Sitting at my desk, my notes on her close to hand, I tuned my TV to static and sunk into the Other Place.

Watcher Doll didn't have any trouble finding Victoria Dallon. It was easier when I had people's faces, so I had a picture of her stuck in my notebook. The moment the screen flickered open, bliss hit me like a hammer. It took me a moment to stop relaxing in it, but I managed to get a grip on myself and force Watcher Doll to switch its eyes back to the real world.

The blonde girl was wearing jogging bottoms, a grey hoodie, and had headphones in. Most people dressed like that would be going out for a run. Instead, she was beating the crap out of a big slab of scrap metal. She was surrounded by rusting, broken nautical parts, so she was probably down at the ship graveyard at the coast towards Red Beach. Most of them were heavily dented. Maybe she had a habit of going there to let out some steam.

I let out a whistle, impressed despite myself. Bouncing up and down like a boxer, Victoria was just literally taking the junk apart, punch by punch. She was shorter than me, and while she looked sporty, 'sporty' didn't exactly cover punching an old cargo container and with all the force of a wrecking ball.

It only made the contrast between our powers more clear. She had proper, heroic powers. Her powers didn't force her to see horrible things. Her powers would let her just save people by taking a bullet which would have hit a hostage. Her powers let her fly.

Maybe she was happy. Maybe she was… was feeling good that she'd helped take down a wanted criminal. Well, if that was the case that was the end of our association. I couldn't work with someone who didn't feel bad that two innocent people were dead.

I took a breath, and screwed my eyes shut. I imagined Phobia, her mask crying blood. I imagined her bound in barbed wire within my head. It only took a moment. I couldn't be scared for this. This was important. "Glory Girl," I said. "This is Panopticon. Stand by for your briefing."

From the way she squeaked and jumped into the air, whirling around, I guessed she'd heard me. "P-Panopticon," she stammered. "How… where are you?"

"Your music player is a valid receiving device," I said. "Please stand by."

"But how? It's…" she pulled it out, "it's not even in wi-fi range!"

"We have our ways," I said. This managed to be both completely accurate and totally useless. I really was quite proud of it. Anyway, it wasn't like I was lying to her. About that, at least. Obviously I was lying about a lot of other things. "Charles Haythorn is dead," I said. I felt numb. Nothing more.

Victoria scowled. The light from the setting sun caught her face as she peered around, trying to check if I was hiding somewhere nearby. "Yeah," she said sullenly. "And I know I fucked up, but I couldn't talk them into letting me do it! No one treats me with any respect!"

Wait, what? I took a breath, and tried to get past the feeling that a step which I'd been about to stand on suddenly wasn't there anymore. "Explain," I said. It was a useful word. It gave me time to think.

She kicked a cargo container viciously, tearing the door clean off. It had been bolted and locked. "I don't get to do _anything_!" she growled. "I'm not a real hero. I just show up at photoshoots and… and I'm a celebrity! I don't get to join the Wards! I don't get to even help out! I can fly and I can stop bullets and… and I'm strong and fast and I don't get to use it for _anything at all_!" Each exclamation was accompanied by a punch into the poor abused cargo container. She took a deep breath, and obviously tried to get a grip on herself. "Sorry," she added. "But… but at least Amy gets to _do _things."

Well. Uh. I swallowed. This was almost too easy.

Maybe it was a trap.

…or maybe she was just like me. Stuck in a world which didn't... which didn't seem to want to be helped. Sure, her powers were the kind that a real hero should have, but she was too young to actually use them. I hadn't thought about what that would be like. I mean, sure, it was a good thing that America wasn't like those backwards places which made parahumans fight as child soldiers. I didn't want to live in a country like that. But I – and I guess Victoria too – just wanted to stop the bad guys and… I shook my head. I was getting distracted.

"Intel leads have produced the location of a new criminal," I said. "A murderer, name of Lew Chong."

"Really? Where?"

"Uh…" I hated myself for that, "we are still trying to confirm the leads. But I want to know if you will be free to participate in a possible raid this evening or night." I glanced down at my notes. "This will not be a tip-off. We need your help for the capture." I paused. "It won't be possible without you," I added. I quite liked that line.

Victoria paced up and down, frowning. "Tonight," she said, eyes widening. "I… yeah. I can do this. Amy's working and… yeah, I'll say I'm going to a friend's house. You can contact me if I've got my phone, right?"

"Yes." It was moving so fast. I needed to flip over my notes. "This raid must remain off the public radar," I said. "You should not wear your Glory Girl costume." This would fall apart if people knew it was her. There'd be questions and they might find out I wasn't a real government agency. "Wear dark colours, and a balaclava. Cover your hair. If this works out, we will consider getting you an alternate costume for use."

Her eyes lit up. She seemed to like the sound of that. "Dark clothes, balaclava. Should I get a mask? Oh! I think I know where I can get one of those sad theatrical masks. That'd totally scare the criminals!"

"Yes," I said. I hadn't planned for this. I wanted her to just look entirely generic, not build a second secret vigilante identity. But a mask couldn't hurt, right? I needed to draw this to a close, either way. "You will be contacted when we confirm the target's location," I told her, and added, "I have a strong lead, but he might move."

Victoria pumped her fist. "Yes," she said enthusiastically. "Uh… see you later? Like, will I see you? I want to meet you, if we're going to be working together."

It would be a mistake to meet her. She might realise I was just some teenager in a costume. "I'll… uh, talk to my bosses," I said, and realised that that hadn't been anywhere near formal enough. I wasn't in control. "We will be in touch," I repeated, and told Watcher Doll to stop conveying the sound.

I sighed and slumping down on my bed. I didn't feel scared, but I felt tense all over, and suddenly exhausted. I stared at the stained Other ceiling of my bedroom. Should I be feeling bad about lying to her? I didn't feel bad. No, I decided. I shouldn't feel bad. We were going to punish criminals, and this was the only way to get her to work with me, so it was the right thing to do.

Although she did seem to be pretty naïve. I guess she'd accepted me after my first attempt at passing on intel turned out to be real. She wasn't suspicious of someone playing a long game to fuck her over.

Well. I guess _she _was one of the popular kids.

I rolled off my bed, and prepared for a fake evening where I'd get Dad off my back so I could sneak out later. In the end, I wound up setting Cry Baby on him at about eight, and he was in bed at nine. He needed more rest anyway. He worked too hard, and was always worrying. It was better for his health that he got a good night's sleep.

When I unfolded my map and checked on Lew Chong, he was still sat in the bar. Perfect. Actually, a second look showed a lot more empty glasses on the table in front of him. Yeah, he was definitely drunk, which might be a problem. I'd wanted him to go home, away from all the other White Lions. I guessed I'd need to wait until he went out for some reason. I didn't think they'd be okay with us kicking down the door. Well, Glory Girl kicking down the door.

I took a deep breath. She might not even get involved, tonight. It'd just be me going there, at first. I'd only call her out if I worked out how to get him out, or if he left of his own accord. I wasn't the police. I wouldn't risk getting anyone killed.

I snuck out the door and took a bus ride down to Chinatown wrapped in Isolation. Sniffer sat beside me, too-long legs bent right up in front of her face. I left my gas mask off for now and spent my time trying to adjust the straps. I just couldn't get the stupid thing to fit properly. At least it occupied me for the journey.

Chinatown was down south of the Docks, made up of early twentieth century redbrick housing built for dockland and industrial workers. The streets had that too-narrow feel which told you plain as day that it hadn't been built with cars in mind, and matters hadn't been helped by the newer buildings which reached up over the redbricks. The city had actually put up a tacky dragon arch at the formal boundary of the neighbourhood, but Chinatown was already spilling out from around the edges, Chinese writing trailing out into nearby shops and restaurants.

The whole area looked much better off than the bits to the west of the Docks. Or around home, come to think of it. The buildings looked more freshly painted and there was even brand new construction going on here. It was dark and I could see the floodlit cranes. I mean, I'd known they existed, but it sort of rubbed it in. Even in the Other Place, it was a bit less worn down and dilapidated.

I also found that the Other Place didn't do ethnic theming. I couldn't tell most of the monster-men-and-women walking the red-lit streets were Chinese if I just looked at them. Uh, thank you, Other Place, for telling me that the hearts of men were all the same and were just as horrible and evil-looking, regardless of what they looked like on the outside.

… the Other Place was a really terrible conveyer of moral lessons.

But at least that meant I was even less likely to be tempted by any of the skinhead or Patriot gangs around. Dad would literally disown me if I turned out as a Republican, let alone a skinhead. The only reason he wouldn't was if he was too busy trying to murder me with an axe.

I wasn't even sure if I was joking. It'd be a pretty terrible villain origin story for him, either way.

Sniffer pointed out the bar. It was a tall redbrick building down by the waterfront, with a big red illuminated sign on the top that faced back towards the city, adding another storey to its height. The narrow entrance and stained wood door suggested it'd been a drinking establishment even before Chinatown expanded. Maybe it had been a speakeasy in the Prohibition, or something. Its sign said it was called Ocean Lemon, which sounded like someone had just stuck two randomly-chosen nouns together.

From here, I could see the government facility out on the oil rig in the bay. When I dropped into the Other Place, I could see beautiful flares of light overhead, like shooting stars or fireworks. I sighed. Heroes or tinkertech craft, I thought dreamily. They were so wonderful. But all too soon, they moved out of sight. I checked my watch, and blanched slightly at how long I'd stood there. No more time to waste. I put on my balaclava and mask, and let myself in.

Well, technically I tailgated in behind someone else, walking right past the bouncer. He didn't bother me and I didn't bother him. That was how I liked it, really.

Gloved hands in my pockets, I strolled through the bar, Sniffer trailing behind me. Thick clouds of blue cigarette smoke wafted through the air, making me really, really glad I was wearing my gas mask. This just looked normal. Even the Other Place wasn't warped too extremely. But then again, this was a real bar, full of ordinary men and women getting drunk. People moved to avoid me and my halo of monstrous butterflies, while Sniffer just walked through the twisted Other Place figures like she wasn't real.

Tapping me on the shoulder, she pointed directly upwards. I had to walk up two floors before I got to where Lew Chong was, and then I had to tailgate in past another level of security. The bouncer on that door was rather more serious looking. He still didn't notice me, but he clearly wasn't there to check IDs. In the Other Place, he was a horned beast with hands coated in that black oil which meant death. Bulging wires protruded from sores on his arms. Definitely not a nice guy.

There was a second bar up here – the one I'd seen through Watcher Doll's eyes. It looked really professional in the real world. It had a proper bar counter with a ton of different bottles stacked behind it. If it anything, it looked nicer than the one downstairs. It _looked _like a legal place. I didn't think I'd ever wind up in a proper speakeasy like this. Gangs ran illegal drinking establishments all the time in movies and books, but I'd always thought they romanticised it a lot and most places which illegally sold drinks would be much cruder.

…maybe it wasn't actually illegal, I considered. Maybe it was just a private club. It'd probably be a lot more work to actually make a hidden place which illegally sold perfectly-legal alcohol, especially when it was literally right above a normal bar. That was a pity. I kind of wanted to be sneaking through a speakeasy to arrest a criminal. It had a certain cachet. Or maybe I'd just seen too many late night Hong Kong flicks. Dad was a fan.

But even if it wasn't illegally selling the drinks, this was clearly a White Lion Association hang-out. The Asian men in the ill-fitting suits were easily identifiable. It's really not that hard when people have those white masks they wear dangling off the back of their chairs. Not everyone had one, though. Maybe they were just 'associates' of the gang.

A lot of the real gang members were carrying weapons. Most of them had pistols, but a few had rifles or shotguns leaning against the tables. When I poked my head behind the bar – out of curiosity if nothing else – I noticed that they had more guns. Alcohol and guns. A wonderful combination. Was this normal for gang-run drinking places, or were they on edge about something? I didn't know. It wasn't as if this was the sort of place I usually went to.

Admittedly, going to somewhere like Winslow meant that I was one of the only students who wasn't going out and getting drunk in places which'd serve teenagers, if I trusted the rumours. I didn't, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, there was Lew Chong, squatting in thick layers of rot and decay in a circle of brutish monsters. He was a pale, grey-skinned figure with flesh pulled tight over his bones. His eyes were hollow pits, and fires guttered from his mouth when he spoke. Anger issues, if I had it right. I checked his hands. Bloody, raw knuckles, leading down to long claws for fingernails. Yeah, anger and violence. I couldn't see any sign of death on him, but he was clearly violent and dangerous – and I couldn't see any signs of chains on him. No restraint. There was a rotting figure snuggled up to him, vaguely feminine, her tattered and worn dress barely covering anything at all. I winced at the open wounds on her forearms and shoulders.

He was also firmly ensconced in his corner, and didn't look like he'd left all evening. I checked my watch. It was nearly half-ten. He'd been in this bar for at least five hours. He couldn't stay in here among the gang members forever, right?

Rising back into reality, I found a stool at the bar and sat down, watching him and his friends. It was sort of interesting. There was something I hadn't appreciated in the Other Place, which was the female gang members. I'd expected girls to be here as eye-candy, like the one hanging off Lew, but not to see women wearing the same cheap suits as the men. Didn't seem to be any men wandering around shirtless, though. That didn't seem very fair.

… not that I wanted shirtless men wandering around here. It wasn't like the female arm-candy was that pretty anyway. Most of them were so plastered with make-up you'd probably see cracks if they relaxed their mouths out of that rictus grin. Fake little dolls, smiling for the guys who 'played' with them and covering up the bruises with paint. Disgusting. I didn't even need to look into the Other Place. I knew I was right.

I decided to head up to the roof. I could still keep an eye on him with Watcher Doll from up there, and I wouldn't… you know, be totally doomed if I let Isolation slip. Anyway, I wanted some fresh air. The gas mask was hot and stuffy and really limited how much I could see or hear.

Outside the pool of light coming from the door, the illuminated sign was the only light on the roof. The puddles left over from the rain earlier caught its red glow. It made them look like blood. I shivered at the morbid thought. I'd spent enough time thinking about that recently. No one was going to die here. I was going to do it right this time. I was here. I wasn't leaving it up to useless cops.

I made the call.

"Glory Girl. This is Panopticon. The suspect has been located. My superiors have authorised me to initiate this mission. Are you ready?"

She was ready. Hell, she was more than ready. She was still in her room, but this time she'd found a set of biker leathers with red trim. On her desk, there was a balaclava and a Wicked Witch of the West mask. "Ten four, Panopticon," she said, obviously trying to sound professional. She wasn't as good at it as me. "Just tell me where I need to go."

I gave her the address. "Land on the top of the building," I told her. "You will be briefed further there." That delay was partly so I'd seem more cryptic. Mainly, though, it was mostly doing it because… uh, I still sort of needed to work on a plan. Like, what if he didn't come out for hours? There were still hours until midnight, and what if he stayed here until 2am or something? My mind was whirring as I tried to think of ways to isolate him, running over all the things I could do with my powers.

"Got it!" Victoria said. She pulled on the balaclava, added the green-skinned mask on top, and then left via the window. I found a dry patch in the wind-shadow of the illuminated sign, and made some cherubs – one to keep an eye on her, one for Lew Chong, below my feet in the bar.

I was left waiting rather longer than I'd hoped. When I checked up on Glory Girl, she was periodically swooping down and consulting street signs. She was lost! Honestly!

Sure, it was probably harder to navigate from the air when it was dark, but still! If you had flying powers, why wouldn't you memorise the aerial layout of the city so you could fly equally well by day or night?

In the meantime, I puzzled over how to get him out. I couldn't just send her into the bar to drag him out by the scruff of his neck. They had guns down there! Even if she was immune to bullets, no one else in there was. If they started shooting, they'd hit _someone_. Maybe each other, maybe the bar staff, maybe someone downstairs! If that happened, I wouldn't be any better than the police. I couldn't let anyone else die.

It had been hot in there. Hot and smoky. Yes. I needed to make him feel like he needed to cool down. I needed to make him want some fresh air. He'd probably come up to the roof, but even if he went out the main entrance, she could still grab him there. He'd be all on his own. Glory Girl was strong and tough. She could even fly. It'd be easy for her to take him down, and then she could go deposit him at a police station.

So… Hot. Smoky. Choking. Trapped, confined, needing to get outside. That's what I wanted him to feel. What made me feel like that? Tasting the stink in the air, seeing tiny cracks of light that only emphasized the darkness – no! No! I couldn't think about that! I- I wasn't after claustrophobia. I just wanted heat and smoke and stuffiness. Like a classroom in the height of summer, where there's no air conditioning. Like the discomfort of wearing my mask in a warm room.

I focussed on that feeling, that raw desire to be outside, and exhaled. The black smoke hissed through my gas mask, taking form before my eyes. It was a squat, impish thing with an ugly dog-like face and a few scrappy combed-over strands of grey hair. The cigarette clamped between its teeth let off a trail of blue-white smoke, and a heat haze wafted around it, rippling the air. I didn't want to think of the word 'demonic', but there was a distinctly… uh, demonic edge to it.

"Smoker," I named it, "go down there. Find Lew Chong. Make him want to come outside."

The little impish thing grinned – or at least bared its teeth – and blew out a smoke ring. Was it just me, or was it getting bigger? I wasn't sure. Either way, it darted off, scampering across the roof and heading down into the building. I sighed, fanning myself from the unpleasant warmness it had left behind, and looked up at the sky of the Other Place. The dingy red moon and strange dim stars shone down on me, peeking between patchwork layers of cloud. Or maybe it wasn't cloud. Maybe it was smoke. Emotional pollution, escaping up to the sky.

Shaking my head, I looked around, trying to catch an early glimpse of the Glory Girl's corona. I perked up happily at the gleam coming in low. The sight of a parahuman was more than enough to banish the dark thoughts I was having, although she didn't seem quite as bright as the previous times I'd seen her. Maybe she was focussing her power more in preparation for a fight. I had no idea how other people felt to use their power.

"Glory Girl," I said. "This is Panopticon. Our surveillance has confirmed that you are nearly in position. Land on the roof. There are multiple armed individuals within the location." I checked the screen floating in front of me. I'd timed it almost perfectly. Lew Chong was getting up, shuffling his way around the table.

Victoria touched down lightly on the rooftop, outside the light spilling from the doorway. I could see her perfectly anyway, of course. I had to repress a happy sigh at the sight of her brilliant pyre of white light. She was shedding embers, and one fell on me. I poked at it. It didn't burn – it felt warm and safe. She was such a good hero, compared to me. I wished I had powers like hers.

"Panopticon?" she asked. I heard her voice in stereo, one coming from the image of her in front of me. "Where are you?"

I had to focus. The bliss of being near a parahuman power was still there, but right now I had to think of other things. "I have you within sight," I said. I was still shrouded in Isolation, so she'd only hear my voice coming from her headphones. "The suspect is leaving his table." I forced myself to look away from her. It was easier if I turned my back on her and only looked at the two screens. "He is heading up to the roof."

"What? Already? Are you sure?"

"I am watching him," I said, staring at the monitor. I heard a rush of air as she took off, floating up above me. To someone who wasn't seeing her as a brilliant flame, she would probably be totally invisible. The stairs leading up to the roof creaked, and right on cue, Lew Chong appeared, heading out onto the roof. I forced myself to surface from the Other Place. I needed a clear head.

"Is that him?" Glory Girl whispered.

"Yes," I said.

She struck.

Have you ever seen a teenage girl take a grown man down like he was a sullen toddler? This was the first time I'd ever seen it in real life. She just threw herself at him, like a living battering ram. I flinched at the blur of motion and that was enough for her to knock him to the ground and pin him down, her knees on his shoulders.

He was thrashing and struggling, but she must have been using… whatever force she flew with to push down. He couldn't get free. The first impact knocked the wind out of him, and he only managed some wheezing yelps before she got her hand over his mouth.

"Shut up," she hissed at him, kneeling over him. She was lit up in red by the billboard, and I swallowed, hard. I was impressed. "Or things'll go even worse for you."

He stopped moving entirely, and just lay there shaking. She pulled out some duct tape from a pouch at her waist with her free hand. I'd brought some in my bag, but apparently she'd come prepared too. "If you scream, I'll hurt you," she said, before carefully moving her hand away. He didn't scream, and she started picking at the roll of tape, trying to get the end up despite how she was wearing gloves.

She'd just started taping him up when things went wrong. A man started shouting. I whirled. There was a man in the doorway back down from the roof, wearing an ill-fitting suit.

He was shouting at us in Chinese so I didn't know what he was saying, but he looked pissed. Crap. Someone else must have thought it was hot and smoky in there. Maybe Smokey… or whatever the hell I'd called that construct… had been sort of indiscriminate. Or maybe it really had been hot and smoky down there.

He was a blocky guy, but that didn't matter so much because he had a gun. Not just a normal pistol, either. It was bigger – some kind of submachine gun or assault pistol or something. The kind you see criminals using in films which are really inaccurate, but spray bullets like a hosepipe. If the movies weren't lying to me, at this kind of range he could hit anyone here. Randomly sprayed bullets wouldn't care that he couldn't see me. Glory Girl might have been immune to guns, but I wasn't. I really didn't want to get shot. I didn't want anyone to get shot. Even Lew Chong.

"Shut up!" Glory Girl shouted at him. "Or I'll hurt him!"

"Let go of him, or I'll fucking shoot you in the face!" he retorted.

My heart was pounding like a drum in my chest. He was pointing the gun at Glory Girl and I didn't know what to do. I needed to get the gun off him. But I hadn't ever tried to disarm someone before. I needed something better. An angel, not a cherub. Yes. Maybe a barbed wire angel could do it.

I sunk down, focussed and exhaled, all in one motion. A gas-masked figure of wire stood between me and Glory Girl's pyre. "Take his gun," I whispered. "Bring it to me."

The skeletal figure bowed to me, and vanished. It reappeared next to the piggish monster, reaching out with its long, clawed fingers.

I think the man must have squeezed the trigger as the angel snatched it. The next few events occurred all in a blur of noise and violence.

Gunshots are really loud when you're close by. I found that out that day. It's not like hearing them at a distance, or in a movie. Something pattered against my coat and brick shattered behind me. I could see it in my mind's eye, bullets tearing through the wall just as easily as they could have torn through flesh. My flesh. Now there were holes in the wall behind me. The same wall I was standing in front of and if I'd been a little bit to the side _I would have been shot_.

I screamed. Just a little bit, but I screamed. It might just have been my imagination, but I swore I'd _felt _the bullets zip by. I'd certainly heard them.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. That had nearly _hit _me.

I almost didn't notice the gun clattering down next to me where the angel dropped it, my ears were ringing so badly. I could smell acrid smoke. And then Glory Girl blurred into motion and she was on the other man, slamming him into the wall.

That was that, I thought numbly staring at the literal smoking gun. I was getting some kind of body armour. Any kind. If I was going to help heroes out, I had to be near the scene, and stray bullets were apparently a really big problem.

I had to focus. Someone must have heard the gunshots. I had to move. I had to tell her to get out of here and take Lew Chong to the cops.

And then I realised that Glory Girl was staring straight at me. Her knuckles were wet. The man she'd been beating was down on the ground, groaning. His face was covered in blood. It… it must have been a nosebleed. Or something like that. He sounded in pain, but he was alive. "Panopticon?" she asked. "Is… are you Panopticon?"

Oh crap. Isolation stopped working somehow. I must have drawn attention to myself by screaming. "Yes," I said, backing away. "Well done. Deliver the captive t-to the police." I was shaking from the adrenaline rushing through my veins, and couldn't keep my voice steady.

"Wait!" she shouted. "I want to talk to you."

"Not now. They'll have heard." I stepped up to the corner of the billboard. "Get out of here. We'll be in touch," I said, stepping out of her line of sight. I needed time to think. I needed to get out of here. Focussing, I brought the barbed wire angel back to me. I almost didn't use it. But the thought of an angry gang heading to the roof was more than enough to overcome my more abstract fears.

The next thing I knew the barbed wire angel had me and I was in the nothing-space again. There was no sight, no sound, no feeling, no sense of my own body. Nothing at all.

I reappeared on a balcony across the street and collapsed, retching. I managed to get my gas mask off, but only bile came out. I could feel hotness running down my cheeks. At first I thought I was crying, but when I touched it I could see the redness on my black gloves. I tested my skin, gingerly. One of the scars on my face had opened up again. Just a little bit.

Fuck my powers. Seriously. I curled into a ball, arms tucked in tight. I felt worse than the times I'd done this before. I must have over-stressed myself with all the other things I'd done before. One use of a barbed wire angel seemed to be the equivalent of – like – ten uses of cherubs or something. And having it carry me, rather than making a tunnel through space, was even worse for me.

By the time I felt ready to stand, Victoria had gone. There were men on the roof opposite, shouting, but they wouldn't find anything. Thank goodness. She was probably going to dump him outside a police station, or something. I didn't really know how you handed in criminals when you were a vigilante.

… probably something I should find out, if I was going to make a habit of this.

Numbly, I picked myself and looked at the gun in my hand. And the rust-red handprint staining it. I was getting a collection of them, confiscated from criminals. It could join the others in my hideout. I shook my head, and shed the Other Place.

Except I wasn't in it. I brushed frantically at the rust and it came off, leaving little reddish black specks on my fingertips.

No. That was impossible. The… the Other Place wasn't real. It was just a way of looking at the world. It was how my power communicated things. There was no way that it could make real rust appear from nowhere.

Yet it had.

I couldn't deal with this. Not now. Not right now. Not when I'd nearly been shot and I was aching and hurting. I wasn't thinking straight. I'd just limp back home and… and go to bed and hope that the rust was gone in the morning.

It wasn't much of a plan, but it was the best I could do at the moment.


	30. Lines 3-08

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 3.08**

A few weeks passed without anything major happening. I'd learned my lesson. I might have caught a criminal, but the cost had been too high. I couldn't just quit, or it'd all have been for nothing, but I wouldn't forget what had happened with Charles Haythorn. I hadn't rushed out to stop any more criminals, even if the papers had reported how Lew Chong had been handed in by unknown parties and was currently awaiting trial. I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.

So instead I'd put my time to good use. I'd spent some time practicing with my powers. I'd felt out the limits of what I could do, got a better grasp on how much I could risk before things started hurting.

Mostly, though, I'd wandered around Brockton Bay. I'd taken up jogging, partly to get fit – I didn't want that angel-door to be my only way to make an escape – and partly as an excuse to get out of the house, away from Dad's fussing.

It also gave me a totally legitimate reason to comb the streets and look around. I took my notebook with me on runs, so I was building up a whole backlog of suspicious addresses. By this point, my map was thick with new stickers marking places of interest. Down in that forgotten basement, I'd started sticking up photos and newspaper cuttings in the dance studio between the two mirrors.

I had real plans for that room.

Just last weekend I'd found another sweatshop, down by the docks. A trail of rot and gory filth had led me to it, and I'd snapped pictures of some of the people working there. Well, not the actual workers - the bosses, the guards, the guys with phones and folders. I'd sent constructs to track them to their homes. This weekend, I'd go on an evidence-gathering run and break in wearing my costume. This time I'd be able to take proper pictures of their books, and I'd even bought a high capacity floppy. I'd be able to transfer choice files off, and hand them straight into the police along with my polaroids.

It was annoying that I couldn't do anything myself, especially after how they handled Haythorn, but they'd handled the first sweatshop well enough. There was no way two teenage girls could handle a place like that, even if we had superpowers. There were tens of people involved in running that place. It was too big for the two of us. Victoria seemed to be getting antsy when I spied on her, but I wasn't prepared to go make up some raid for her. I wouldn't get anyone else killed.

And of course, I still had school, so there was homework taking time away from my heroing. There was _always _homework.

Wednesday afternoon found me in the library after classes were over, working my PS group project with Luci. Yes, I was totally aware of the irony – and the irritation – that researching parahumans for this project was stopping me from going out and researching parahumans. Unfortunately, the fact that I was a legitimate crime-fighting superhero didn't exempt me from schoolwork. The Wards probably got homework, too.

The two of us occupied one of the old, whirring computers, as well as half a desk covered in books. The room smelt of paper, air freshener and a hint of cleaning fluid. It was a comforting smell. I'd gotten pretty good at hiding in the library over the past few years. You just needed to find a seat obviously in sight of the librarian, and people couldn't mess with you without incurring her wrath. It helped that most of the population of Winslow was scared of too many books in close proximity. They probably found the thought of so many words to be intimidating. The books might be plotting to abduct random students and make them participate in spelling bees.

I brushed back my hair and adjusted my glasses. "Okay, so let's go through this. Make sure we're hitting all the key points. I think we can basically call this the first draft right now, but let's just make sure there isn't anything really stupid."

"Yeah," Luci said. She rummaged through the papers and found the print-out of the thing we'd been working on for a week now. Twiddling a pen in her fingers, she underlined the title. "Our topic question is, 'Analyse the changing public perception of parahumans from 1984-1989. How did views change throughout the decade and how was this affected by their impact on wider society? '. And the notes say that we need to consider four to six different topics and there's a 3000 word limit. So, we start. Introduction paragraph. State that we're doing the project on this question."

I frowned. "I don't think we should repeat the question like that there. It's… clunky. Anyway, it's in the header. And we are over the word limit."

"Leave it for now," she said dismissively, adjusting her wire-rim glasses. "It's a first draft. So. Introduction. Say that the viewpoint changed significantly, note that economic changes, political changes… maybe something else?"

"Pop culture?" I suggested. "Things sound better in threes."

"Yeah, sure," she said, adding that to the document. "Okay, so then we've got our headers. Early years, Cold War, 'Golden Age', Reagan Assassination, Silver Age. Five sections feels about right. Then we have our concluding paragraph."

Pursing my lips, I leaned forwards. "I think we're still doing too much 'describe' and not enough 'analyse'. We'll lose marks if we're just recounting things." I jabbed my finger at the offending paragraph. "Maybe if we fold Cold War into Golden Age, we can just talk about how superheroes were military heroes too and then that'll save some words."

"I still think we should go into more detail about CANE," Luci muttered.

"That's an entire section, basically," I argued. "It's over the entire eighties, not just that one event. I bet they phrased the question like that to catch out people who only talk about that." That's totally what I'd do if I was setting essay questions. Put something in which the stupid people could use to get a few marks, but which'd trap them if they ignored the main part of the topic. I adjusted my glasses, and resumed reading. "Oh. 'Too'. Not 'to'," I said.

"Huh?"

"Wrong word there, about half-way down the… look, give me the pen." I made the correction. And then noticed another mistake where we'd used 'curt' rather than 'court'.

Luci frowned. "Why didn't the spellcheck get that?" she asked.

I sighed. "Because 'curt' is also a word. It means…" I waved my hand in the air, "not saying much. Being blunt and to the point. Being direct in how you talk."

Luci flashed a grin at me. "It's great having a walking dictionary like you for this kind of thing," she said. "You read so fast, too."

"I read a lot," I said ruefully. "I'm sort of running out of shelf space in my room. Again. I probably should spend my allowance on something apart from books."

Beside me, Luci stiffened up fractionally. "Yeah, I don't read much. Except at school," she said. "Or to try to make my bratty kid brothers and sisters go to sleep." She laughed, but there was an odd note in her voice. "Anyway, I need to get to the cafe soon, so we better wrap this up."

"Yeah," I agreed. I had afterschool activities of my own, after all. We finished working our way down, with only a few extra corrections and a note to reduce the amount on henchmen culture among young people. Which, huh, was something my parents had been into. Weird. Why on earth did they think those tight outfits in contrasting colours had ever looked good? "So… I think it's looking okay-ish? Apart from the Golden Age-Cold War merger thing." I reached for the print out. "I'll take it with me and find all the other spelling mistakes and bits which need to be rephrased, yeah?"

Luci nodded, starting to stack up the books in front of her. "Yeah, thanks," she said. "You're way better at that than me."

"It's only fair," I said. "You've done more of the actual typing." Which was probably where a bunch of the mistakes had crept in, but I didn't say that out loud. She typed faster than me. Even if I was going to have to clean up the phrasing and spelling later on.

She huffed. "Yeah, that's true," she said. "Okay, so lunchtime again tomorrow?"

"Yeah," I agreed, reaching under the desk for my bag. I always kept it out of view where no one else could grab it, even in the library. I didn't put my coat on, though. I'd need it later, but right now it was actually pretty dry outside. The city's weather gets unpredictable in the spring. It's probably something to do with the shape of the bay. I turned to leave and all-but ran into someone.

It was Madison. Just my luck. Five foot four of false-adorable petite cuteness looked up at me with big eyes. I could taste blood and filth in my mouth. The raw evil bubbling off her must have been escaping the Other Place. Could anyone else taste it, or was it just me who knew how horrible she was?

She'd been right behind where I was sitting, I realized with a chill. What on earth had she been doing? Obviously she'd been up to something, but what?

"What?" I demanded of her. "What do you want?"

The lights in the library flickered and dimmed, leaving us both in the half-gloom. Slowly, piece-by-piece, the paint flaked off the walls, exposing the bare rotting concrete. Everything smelt of damp, soggy paper. Dark water crept up my trouser legs, chilling me to the bone. I could hear whispering in my ears. Screaming, pleading echoes. They sounded like my own voice.

I could taste the locker when I breathed in. She wore the smell of it like a cloak. At least she was alone. She didn't have Emma here. I just couldn't face Emma. She knew everywhere that hurt me most. She'd have ways of getting to me. I just had to run from her. But Madison couldn't hurt me, not in the same way.

"What's your problem?" she retorted, and things spilled out of her mouth. Crawling, glistening black shapes. Lies, so many of them, like flies. They hissed as they crept out of her mouth. No, her mouths - her second face she wore in the Other Place was taking shape, slowly. "I'm just doing my homework," she said, raising her voice over the buzzing of her falsehoods.

"Liar," I breathed. Oozing black smoke crept out of my mouth, reaching out to her through the Other Place. To do what, I didn't know. I just had to stop her lies. The whispers, the bugs, told me she was a liar. That she lied to everyone close to her. Not just about me. That she lied and lied and lied and lied. She had her pencil case in her hand. "You were going to jab me in the back of the neck with a sharp pencil again, huh?"

I had her there, I knew it. I could taste her fear even over the smell of rot and wet books. "Look, just, go away, weirdo," she retorted, backing up. She was taking shallow, gulping breaths even as her face twisted into its real shape. Leaning away from the spreading Other Place, it was like she could smell the filth all around her. Staining her hands. Staining her forever.

"You won't be able to keep on lying," I said. My own distorted voice begged me to tell her, insisted she had to know. "I know what you did. So will everyone else. What'll you do then?"

She shot me a brittle, porcelain smile. Patronising. Nervous. Put to lie by how she was still backing away. Always the little liar. "Look, go be creepy elsewhere. Some of us, h-have Lit essays to do."

I saw red, and nearly went for her. How dare she? Only the fact that I was in front of Luci held me back. That, and the library was a precious haven. People got banned for starting fights. If I hit her… I wouldn't be able to come back. I didn't know what I'd do then.

I couldn't do anything to her. I had to get out of here. As soon as the anger faded I'd start crying and I had to let the anger go or I'd be banned from the library but I couldn't cry in front of her because then she'd win so I had to hold onto the anger but if I didn't let the anger go I'd get kicked out and the loop ran over and over in my head.

I stormed off through the rotten, stinking little hell of the Other Place, through corridors filled with monstrous children. I didn't even need to deliberately create Isolation. It was already here, the rust-red butterflies flapping around. Keeping me safe like nothing else could. I couldn't stay here. I couldn't go home, not when there was even the smallest chance that Dad might see me in this state. I couldn't go to the teachers. No one would believe me if I told on her. They'd call me crazy. Say she might have been telling the truth about her homework.

She wasn't. She was a _liar_.

There was somewhere I could go, though. Somewhere she wouldn't find me. Somewhere no one would find me. Even if anyone would bother to look.

I didn't get a complete grip on myself until I was all the way down in my hideout. The pain of using a barbed-wire angel cramped up my gut, but it was a good pain. An honest pain. Barbed wire angels never pretended they weren't made out of spikes. I knew what I was getting into each time I used one. They didn't lie. I got to deal with them on my own terms.

Compared to them, it was much more painful to deal with people.

Hugging my knees, curled up in a ball among the long shadows cast by the glowsticks that hung from the ceiling, I let it all out. I felt better after that. It was what they meant when they said 'a good cry'. I blotted my eyes on my sleeves, and dug through the trash and scraps I'd accumulated to see if I'd thought to keep some tissues down here. It turns out I had, for dealing with my makeup. Yeah, I'd practically turned this dusty little space into a hidden home away from home. If the home in question was an abandoned, underground gym with a bare few amenities I'd managed to steal or very covertly buy.

I headed through into the canteen, which was the most 'homey' of the rooms. It had started off as an echoing hollow space with off-yellow peeling walls. They'd probably been another colour at some point, but time hadn't been kind. Some chairs had been left down here, and I'd arranged them around one of the floor-bolted tables. I'd even added some blankets and cushions, so I could at least make a token effort at being comfortable. Most of the lighting was from my sickly glowsticks, but I'd added a desk lamp to the table after I found out there was still power running through the canteen's sockets. I guessed they'd just hooked the power supply in the new building into the same circuits or something.

Paper was strewn across the tables. Better quality maps of the city. Smaller ones, which showed more detailed areas. Documents I'd printed out at school on the local PPD heroes. My project with Luci had actually been useful as an excuse there.

Pride of place was my 'Hero Diary', where I was recording everything I could about my powers. A lot of my experiments over the past few weeks had ended up there. Everything I could make my constructs do, everything I definitely _couldn't_ make them do, all the things that hurt me when I did them, all the common themes in the Other Place and what they meant. I'd even made a few attempts at different names for the Other Place, but none had stuck.

It'd be nice if I could draw like Luci. That way I could include proper pictures of my constructs. I'd tried my best, but my best wasn't very good. My barbed-wire angel had wings, sure, but it was mostly a stick figure I'd shaded in grey and put spikes on.

A few other tables were covered in junk electronics from grey market shops, plus stacks of tape and glue and other design store stuff. I was building myself some gadgets. Some fake tinkertech. I was calling it Taylortech. It was pretty clever. Instead of showing off my powers, I'd use this technology to look like I had a team providing me with tinkertech gear. If they existed, they'd be outfitting someone else with gear, so they'd be more like a tailor than a tinker, and it fit that old rhyme, and my name was a homonym for tailor, so... it was pretty clever.

I raised a remote I'd wrapped in wire and painted black, and pressed a button. The red bead on the top lit up. That was going to be my 'emotion ray'. That kind of thing existed anyway. I'd seen it on TV. And if someone spent their time trying to get the remote away from me instead of trying anything else, the time I'd spent would have paid off.

After – ha ha – tinkering for a bit, I remembered to check my watch. I needed to get home soon. I'd told Dad that I was working at school because… well, I had been. It was easier than lying. But that excuse would only work so long, and I was getting hungry. And the time I'd spent doing hero things and thinking about other things than school and Madison meant I'd calmed down. It had been like leaning on a scab. A sudden spike of raw emotional pain. Now that I was away from her, things were better.

There was something I'd been wanting to try out for a few days. While experimenting, I'd found that I could only make corridors through the Other Place if I knew where I was going. I had to be able to sense it, to feel my destination with Sniffer's strange eyes. If it was beyond the reach of the flat, grey vision she gave me then I just couldn't do it, even with the help of a barbed wire angel. A corridor would start to form, but it always collapsed before it opened properly.

Still, I could make smaller rifts over longer distances using a cherub, as long as I had something to 'lock on' to. Wasn't that what I'd done with my flute, back when I'd just got out of hospital? The psych hospital, not the one I'd actually _needed_.

So if I couldn't reach that far with my corridors, it wasn't because the range was an innate limitation of my power. I'd tried a few other tests, but hadn't worked out anything concrete. Maybe it was just that the corridors stressed the Other Place more, just as much as they stressed my body? I was working with 'materials' that couldn't take the strain? If that was the case, then I'd just need to take things more slowly, and reinforce the corridor so it didn't collapse.

And if that worked out, maybe passing through a stable corridor wouldn't hurt me, either. That'd be nice.

The thought was enough to set me in motion. Grabbing a marker pen and a handful of green glowsticks, I headed to the old dance studio. It just felt _right _to try to try it in there. It was a big clear space, sure, but I was thinking about the mirrors. They were almost like windows, and you can climb out of a window. The way they reflected each other endlessly, over the grey floor – well, they looked half-way to the blank greyness of the Other Place corridors already.

"So," I told my reflection. The green light from the glowsticks cast long shadows over her face, leaving her looking macabre and skull-like and yes, a bit like the Wicked Witch of the West. "I want to make a corridor through the Other Place between here and…" I considered my options. A few of my test-runs had made me think it'd be easier if I was aiming at something similar. "Between here and the mirror on the closet in my bedroom," I decided. I smiled at myself, thinly, wishing I had a tape recorder going or something. "It's not quite Narnia but it'll just have to do."

Uncapping the pen, I made marks on the mirror for where the edges of the corridor would need to be, and then connected them up. The survival kit had come with a tape measure for some reason, so I could at least keep the lines straight.

It was… freaky. Yeah. That was about the best word I had to describe it, and I hadn't even entered the Other World yet. The pen marks were reflected in the mirrors, over and over again. I could see a corridor stretching away in the real world, into the green-grey darkness. It was just an optical illusion, two mirrors reflecting each other over and over, but that didn't persuade my brain. If it weren't for the glass against my hand, I'd think I should be able to walk through it already.

I couldn't, of course. Not yet. Now came the hard part. I cracked my knuckles – which I knew I wasn't really meant to do because it could give you arthritis but it made such a satisfying popping sound – and sunk into the Other Place.

The world never changed much down here in my lair. The only difference was that the writing on the mirror distorted and twisted. Nothing much.

No, I was wrong. Right now it was talking. To me. The _writing_ was talking to me.

**no fate no chains no ONE but you exists  
slicE OPen thiS lyIng wOrld Taylor u r REAL**

Around it were butterflies drawn in red. Not blood, just red marker pen. Even more words surrounded them, written in red, in a different style of handwriting. My own handwriting, actually. My own, properly spelt, not-randomly-capitalised handwriting.

**Why does Madison keep following me at school? What's she playing at? She was in the library today.  
She has to be up to something. Not sure what. But something.**

If my own handwriting disturbed me more than those crude rantings, maybe I was getting too used to the Other Place. Sure, it'd tried other freak-out games on me before, but that red text was the first writing I'd seen here which was… normal. It made sense, it was properly punctuated, it was even kind of relevant. The fact that it was my own writing just made it weirder.

I tried to calm myself down, practicing the breathing tricks they'd taught me in the psych hospital. There had to be a sensible explanation. And as soon as I thought one up, I'd realise there was no need to be freaked out by my own handwriting. After all, near as I'd been able to tell, the Other Place just reflected what people did – there _had_ to be some kind of reason behind everything it did. Yeah, that actually made sense. It was just me. No one else could have been down here in years, so I was leaving my mark. And since it was isolated – and since I was the one with control over the Other Place – the signs of my presence would _obviously _be clearer. Maybe the text was only incoherent elsewhere because it was obscured by the 'noise' of so many other thoughts, all from different people?

See! A perfectly sensible explanation. Sure, it was a bit weird, but all of my powers were a bit weird. I'd come to terms with that. I didn't need to have a heart attack just because the Other Place looked like it was talking to me, telling me I was the only real person. I knew exactly what was going on.

I threw myself into making the corridor, cutting off any further thought. It was hard – harder than anything I'd ever done before, like forcing one of my strongest constructs to obey. It turned out one barbed-wire angel wasn't enough. I'd need two. One to tear open the hole in space, and another to shape the grey Other-stuff I breathed out, to give it a structure that wouldn't just fall apart. Could they even do that? Was that what they were for? Or would I need something more specialised? I'd developed Watcher Doll out of my porcelain cherubs – perhaps I needed something similar here.

Needles, maybe? Not the medical sort, the kind you used for sewing, to knit the walls of the corridor together, and stop them tearing apart at the seams. I let myself sink back into the shadows of the Other Place, and exhaled. A rough mound of mist condensed into a spidery hunchback, a woman made of wire with long sewing needles for fingers. I could see the similarities to my barbed-wire angels. That probably meant I'd made her right for what I wanted.

She clicked her fingers together, staring at me. Déjà vu squirmed in the back of my brain. I'd done something like this before – but I just couldn't remember when.

"Uh," I said. Fuck, I needed a name for her. I hated having to name my constructs. I wasn't very good at it. "Needle Hag," I said. "Hold the walls of the corridor together."

She hissed like a bellows, her chain-hair falling in front of her face. Clicking over to the mirror, she clambered in past the wire-angel, and started plucking out her hair with one of her hands. I winced. I couldn't imagine doing that. It was a good thing she was probably not exactly real. The other five hands worked to weave the hair into chain-cobwebs over the walls, holding the corridor together. She visibly degraded as she tore herself apart for raw materials, which meant I had to focus on strengthening her, breathing out more and more smoke to replace what she lost.

God, my brain must be a fucked up place.

By the end of it, my brain was aching and my throat felt raw. I felt like I was coming down with something, and I was sure I had a temperature. If not, I was just shivering uncontrollably. Annoyingly, I could feel abdominal cramps, although it shouldn't have been that time of the month yet. Still, it was done. I could suddenly see light at the end of the tunnel. Literally.

I forced myself to walk through it, step by step, as the chill of the Other Place sunk into my bones. It was much worse than normal, almost as bad as when I'd been carried by an angel. Surrounded by chain-coated walls, the door of light ahead was my only reminder me that the real world existed. My legs were feeling weak and the sheer stupid recklessness of what I was doing was nagging in my brain. I hunched in on myself as I moved, shrinking back from the spikes that bristled from the walls. God only knew what would happen if I snagged myself on this barbed wire.

Cold, shivering, aching, I stepped out of the corridor, out of the Other Place, and collapsed onto my bed. It took two tries for me to roll over, but I was just in time to see the corridor seal itself. The air was hazy and foggy for a few moments, but that faded too. All that was left was a dusty smudge on the mirror, but checking through Sniffer's eyes, I could see a scar on the world – and behind it, the tunnel was still holding strong. I could open it again with an angel. Good. I wouldn't have to go through all that again.

I spent whole minutes lying there, curled up into a ball, eyes shut against the evening sunlight, clutching my stomach. It was only the noise of footsteps downstairs that told me that Dad was home – he must have been home for a while, too. I hadn't heard his car.

Crap. I'd spent the last few hours in a dust-coated old cave, and I looked the part. I kept on meaning to clean the place up, but I never had. Instead, I'd tracked dusty footsteps on my carpet and my clothes were a mess. Especially my jeans, where I'd been sitting and kneeling.

I groaned. I'd need to clean up, or at best Dad would be asking some inconvenient questions. I'd need a shower, too. My hair was thick with dust. I just wanted to lie down for a little longer, but I had to snap to it.

After a shower and a change of clothes I was feeling much more human. I headed downstairs – slightly alarmed when I saw the time – and got stopped at the foot of the stairs by Dad.

"I didn't hear you come in," he said.

"Just tired," I said. "I was doing work with Luci in the library for a project. You know? Like I told you this morning." I sighed. "And yeah, it took longer than expected but she's working tomorrow and we had to get stuff done, you know?"

"Okay. But you still should've called me," he told me.

"I told you I'd be in the library 'till quite late."

"Yes, so you should've called me and told me when you were going to be back." He sighed, slumping slightly, and gestured me through into the kitchen. The lights were on and it was warm from the oven – such a contrast to my lair. Still, I'd rather have been down there than up here, facing a round of awkward questions. "Taylor?" my dad asked hesitantly. He coughed, and shuffled his feet. "Are… are you feeling okay?"

"Me?" I asked, rather stupidly.

"I don't think anyone else in the house has that name."

"Well, unless my evil hunchbacked twin brother escaped from the basement again," I tried. He just stared at me. "Sorry, was I not meant to know about him?" I tried again, looking to brush this all off. He frowned, so I guess I misread the mood.

"I'm being serious here," he said, shuffling around to block off the door like I wouldn't notice. "You've just been… I don't know. Distant."

Of course I've been distant. I've been 'distant' for years. And you didn't notice.

I didn't say that. Instead, I said "I'm fine".

"Have you been having any more trouble at school?" he asked, not moving from his position in front of the door. "It's just… I noticed that bruise on your wrist, and… it looks like someone grabbed you."

A bruise? I looked at one wrist, and then the other. Sure enough, there was a pink mark all around it, over the top of the scars. It did really look like a hand mark, too. It even had a thinner bit which would totally be the thumb.

Where the fuck had that come from?

I looked up at Dad, eyes wide. "I don't know," I said. I really didn't. Where could it have come from? I… I didn't have a clue. Had one of my constructs touched me there? That was the only thing I could think of. I hadn't been grabbed by anyone. Had it been the nightmares? I… I wasn't sure. I hadn't noticed it in the morning, but then again – I prodded at it – it wasn't hurting.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" he demanded, voice rising.

"I mean I really don't!" I protested. "It's not from school. You didn't see it last evening, right? And I didn't see it either." I thought hard. "I did trip over the kerb when I was walking and hit my wrist," I lied, "but… no, that wouldn't leave that kind of mark."

It had to be linked to my powers in some way, or to the pain and nausea which hit me when I pushed myself too far. I wasn't feeling great even after the shower.

"It doesn't hurt, whatever it is," I said thoughtfully. I worked my wrist. "It looks bad, but it's just pink. And itching a bit," I added, because it really was itching now. "Maybe it's from the wristbands." Yeah, I realised, I had put them through the wash. "Are you using a new washing powder?"

Dad relaxed. "Yeah, yeah," he said after a moment's thought. "Sorry. I found rust flecks on my shirts, so I put some cleansing agent in for a cycle. It was meant to come right out, it said on the box," he said sheepishly.

Rust. My blood ran cold and my breath caught in my throat. But no. It had to be a coincidence. This wasn't a new house. It couldn't be related.

I had to believe that.

"I hope I'm not getting… like, eczema or something," I said, trying to sound like I was only concerned about that. "That'd suck."

Dad mostly looked relieved at my genuine confusion. "Yeah," he agreed. "Yeah, that would." He frowned. "There was something I was going to tell you. Oh yeah, that was it. Phone call for you. From Sam. Girl-Sam, that is. It was about… uh, six or so? A bit after I got back."

"Did she say what it was about?"

"I think she just wanted to talk," Dad said. He leaned towards me. "You're going to call her back, aren't you?" he said, in the kind of question which wasn't really a question at all.

"Yeah," I said. I didn't really feel like it. I still felt pretty bad from the way I'd made the corridor. But if I didn't do it, Dad would totally be more of a pain about stuff and then he'd act all disappointed with me and that'd take far more effort to deal with than just calling her. "Let me just find her number…"

"I wrote it down by the phone," he said.

Urgh. I was going to delay things a bit. Damn. I grabbed the portable phone and sat down in front of the TV, playing with my still-damp hair. We who are about to die salute you and all that.

Actually, it mostly wasn't too bad, once I got over the tiny hot knot of nerves I tend to hit whenever I talk to someone on the phone. Sam was fine. Fine was a word which was used a lot. School was fine. The amount of catch-up work she was having to do was fine. She was getting on with her parents fine.

I was answering in much the same way, which raised the question of how much she was lying just like me. Probably less. After all, she was at Arcadia. Arcadia wasn't Winslow. Just by being in Arcadia one of my major issues would have been fixed.

There was a lot of um-ing and err-ing. God. I couldn't talk casually to girls my own age at all. Or boys, because – ha ha ha _no_. The closest thing to a normal conversation I had most days was with Luci, and that was about schoolwork.

It wasn't that I couldn't get on with Sam. I got on with her okay. The fact that we had almost nothing in common apart from the psych hospital actually worked out. It meant we could be… acquaintances. Not really friends, but I could handle this kind of 'occasional chat' level of interaction. Maybe things might be different if we went to the same school – but if we did, she'd have much more ammunition if she turned on me. And much more reason to.

"So, uh," Sam said. She'd obviously been dancing around this for a while. "Listen. Next weekend, I'm going to see Leah. Look. Uh." She took a breath. "Do you want to come along?"

My stomach tied itself up all over again. Objectively, I'd got on okay with Leah. And if I'd had anyone out there when _I'd_ been in the psych hospital, other than Dad, I'd have wanted them to visit me. It was just…

… I didn't want to go back. Not at all. Not one bit. I wasn't crazy. I didn't need that place.

"Uh," I said.

"It'd mean a lot to her," Sam said. "I mean… like, you two got on pretty well, right? You… you could talk about books. And she's lonely there and… and… and I've been reading up and… and what she has… she's going to be in there for quite a long time, okay? She's going to get better, of course she is, but… it'd mean a lot."

The guilt and fear churned in my stomach. I… I didn't want to go back there. But I… I couldn't…

"I'll… um, s-see if I can make it," I stammered. "I'm not sure and… and I'll need to talk to my Dad and… um…"

"If you'd have problems getting there, I can pick you up," she said.

"I'll have to see," I said.

I scraped my way through the rest of the talk and then sat there, staring at the wall blankly.

I was really a horrible person. Such a… a fucking _coward_. Why was I scared of going back there? I wouldn't be going as a patient. Just to see someone who was sort of a friend.

Hugging my knees, I sighed. I knew why I was scared. There was the lurking fear that I'd go back and have to stay. It was the same fear which gnawed at me when I thought about Luci, and what she might think about me after Madison's little game in the library. People didn't target me in the same way at school, but only because I hid from them with Isolation. I knew what they must be thinking. I was the disturbed one. The kid who'd been outright committed for a while. They had to know. I bet Emma would have made sure everyone knew I was crazy. To defend herself if nothing else, because if I was crazy I couldn't be trusted.

But I wasn't crazy! I saw things, but they were really there! Hell, if I was crazy, I'd be able to see it in myself with my powers and I _couldn't_! Even if I did go insane, I'd be able to cut it out of me, just like I did with tiredness!

I'd show them they shouldn't be scared of me. I'd show them that _I _didn't have anything to be scared of. I'd be able to face a trip to a psych hospital as a visitor. I was a hero. I deserved to feel like a hero, not a scared little girl who nearly burst into tears at the sight of a bully.

So that evening, I told Dad I was going for a run in a park. Then I went and lurked around one of the nearby-ish National Guard posts. They'd knocked down two blocks and tarmacked over the rubble when they'd built the place, and put up ugly grey-green prefab buildings in their place. There were high barbed wire fences around the perimeter, and soldiers with guns at the checkpoint. They definitely didn't want people coming in.

It didn't stop me. By the time I headed home, I had some women's body armour and a crate of smoke grenades down in my secret base. I'd wanted flashbangs, but they didn't have any of them. Smoke grenades wouldn't hurt anyone, but they'd let me drive people out of rooms without needing to use my powers, and I'd have a great excuse to call firefighters on any building I wanted the police to investigate. I wouldn't need to go back and forth with evidence and photos and phonecalls if I found a drug den, not when I could have a cherub drop a smoke grenade on the roof. One emergency call later, and the firefighters would find the lab.

Yeah, this had been a productive use of an evening. I'd gotten over the unpleasantness with Madison entirely. It wasn't bothering me at all. I'd totally forgotten about it. She could just sit at home and do her meaningless petty things. She probably spent her evenings talking about boys or doing her nails.

I was a hero, making the world a better place. I was _better _than her.


	31. Lines 3-09

****An Imago of Rust and Crimson****

**Chapter 3.09**

The weather worsened over the next couple of days. A cold front swept down from the north, bringing biting, freezing rain. The news was talking about widespread flooding in Canada. We weren't getting flooding – well, not around the coast at least – but seriously, what the hell weather? Why couldn't it go rain in the Dust Bowl states or California? They'd probably appreciate water down there – and it might stop us getting red snow up here from the dust.

It was late evening, and I'd just stopped in at a shop in a neighbourhood south of the Docks. Partly to buy myself something sweet and sugary as a treat, but mostly to get out of the rain before I froze completely. My dark trousers were soaked, and my black waterproof was dripping water down the back of my neck. It was a new purchase and so far I didn't think it was living up to its name.

Dad was going to be so pissed at me when I got back. I needed a better excuse for wandering around the dodgy bits of the city than "I'm just going for a run". In most situations, he'd be right – but I was perfectly safe. No-one would bother me when I was in Isolation.

It was annoying, honestly. Still, there was no point complaining. It wasn't like I even _could_ complain – that'd mean telling him what I was really doing. Maybe I should just send him to bed early, to stop him from worrying? I didn't want to actually prevent him from feeling worried, because who knew what the side-effects could be, but…

Sighing, I ran my hands through my hair. I hadn't planned to be out today anyway. I'd been going to get an early night for visiting Leah, but Sam had cancelled on me. She'd called me up, sounding mortified. Apparently she'd forgotten she had an appointment at the Dove Clinic which clashed with that day and she'd be out of town and she really hoped I hadn't had any plans I'd cancelled for her or anything like that, et cetera, et cetera.

I'd told her no, I hadn't had any plans, it was fine, don't worry about it. I hadn't told her that I was quite glad I didn't have to go. The gap in my schedule opened up Friday evening to go explore Brockton Bay. I'd marked out some suspicious sites on my map, places with strange counterparts in the Other Place, and I wanted to poke around a few of them after they'd closed for the day. It wasn't like I needed to be up early tomorrow now.

Right now, though, I was just soggy and craving something sugary. This unseasonable weather was making everything wet and miserable. I was on the verge of giving up and going home because I didn't want to catch a cold.

"Bad rain we have right now," the tiny, wrinkly old Chinese lady behind the counter of this mum-and-pop shop said when I went up to the counter to pay.

"Yeah," I agreed. The shop smelt of cigarette smoke. Racks of top shelf magazines stared down at me from behind her with falsely flirtatious gazes. "Not looking forward to going back out there."

Her head bobbed up and down as she pulled an unfiltered cigarette out of a packet with her teeth and lit it. "It look like it get better last week, but now this," she said, lighting up. Her teeth were nicotine yellow, just like her hair. "You want my advice, girl, go home. Only stupid people go out and get wet like that. Call taxi or something," she said, exhaling smoke like a dragon and looking over the top of her cigarette. "It not safe out there. Girls go missing, you know? Fucking Jap Boumei make move on area. They go after pretty young girl like you."

My eyes widened. That sounded like a lead. "Oh?" I asked.

"Yeah." She coughed, a hacking lung-shaking hack, and leaned forwards over the counter. "I live in America for forty year," she said, cigarette waggling in her mouth as she talked. "New York! New York! It hell of a town. Hah. It drowned now. Now fucking Japs come over, bring crime, and people can't see difference between us and them! Patriots have right idea, send them all home! Hah! Cops take my grandson in for questioning. They think he part of Boumei. So stupid! They think all Asians run in same gang."

"That must suck," I said.

"Yeah! Got it in one!" She sucked on her cigarette. "It make my blood angry to think of them going anywhere near my granddaughters," she said. "Lucky for me my two girls are smart. Know how to keep out of trouble."

"So where did these girls go missing?" I asked. "So… like, I know where to avoid."

"Mostly bars, from what I hear." She looked me up and down. "Hah. You a bit young to be going in bars, though. Even if you have to duck to avoid signs!"

I blushed. There had been a low-hanging sign by one of the freezers. I'd managed to walk into it. I guessed that with someone this short running the place, she didn't really account for people who were five-eleven walking around. "So they're not grabbing people off the streets?" I asked.

"Oh, no, they do that too. Attack many girls and boys in the street. They want people scared of them." She shook her head, exhaling smoke. "They should go back to where they came from," she repeated.

In the Other Place, she was a little impish figure, with grey skin like old paper, as shrivelled as an apple left out in the sun for a month. The only unwrinkled skin I could see were around the thick black veins on her forehead and bulging throat. I sniffed. They smelled bitter, a scent I'd worked out was fear. She was scared of a lot of things.

The door chimed behind me, and I glanced back as a man with eyes stitched shut and pale tendon hanging like threads from his withered limbs amble in. I blinked back to reality.

"Evening, Chu," the elderly man called out cheerfully, walking with a stick. "Horrible weather out there, isn't it?"

"I was just saying that," the old woman said. "It like winter again."

"I know, right?" He stepped up to me and I moved sideways to make space for him. "Twenty of the usual, if you would."

"Coming right up," the shop owner said, turning to unlock the cigarette counter behind her.

"You know, there's another raid on Third Street," he said, leaning forwards over the counter. "They've shut the entire street off for several blocks."

The old lady shook her head. "They never!" she said.

"Uh huh. Full works, too. I was just walking past on the way here and I had to go around it. They got tanks and lots of ambulances and power armour and choppers overhead. Something big's going on."

"Really?" I asked curiously, pocketing my purchases.

"Oh, yes," the old man said, half-turning to bring me into the story. "I bet they're going after some supervillain. They even got tanks out."

"Wow," I said, trying not to sound too interested. I turned to leave, putting up my hood as I stepped out into the rain and headed immediately towards Third Street.

As soon as I got there, I saw that the old guy wasn't wrong. He was barely even exaggerating. The entire street was cordoned off with tape, and police vans and black cars parked at the edge. Traffic cops were moving the onlookers along, and blowing their whistles at drivers who rubbernecked.

I immediately retreated into Isolation, and fetched my balaclava, my gas mask and my camera from my lair. I'd better poke around, to find out what I could do to help and maybe see if there were any parahumans on-site. This looked big, so they'd obviously find it useful to have someone else around. I could already see the beautiful gleam of tinkertech.

By the entrance of the street, there was a cluster of irritated, wet people who weren't being allowed to go home. An old man standing by the tape just short of Featherstone Apartments argued with a cop wearing a high visibility jacket. He wasn't letting him back into his home despite it literally being ten metres away. A blonde girl wearing a damp white hoody lounged sullenly under the cover of the vandalised bus stop, typing furiously on her phone. She was aggressively chewing on a wad of gum, blowing red bubbles and getting angrier and angrier.

"Come on, you crappy network," I heard her mutter. "Why won't you send?"

I stepped between the barricades, ducked under the police tape, and walked straight past the cordon of wet cops. There, infiltration complete. The only thing I had to worry about was whether my balaclava's waterproof lining was going to hold up. If it didn't, things would get damp and unpleasant.

Past the cordon were more groups of black-clad police, standing around holding machine guns. The tanks that old man had been talking about were actually APCs, painted in the black and blue of police vehicles. They even had red and blue lights on the top just like a cop car. That made a lot more sense. I know Dad went on and on – and on – about how we were 'practically a police state', but I didn't think they'd send tanks out to arrest people.

In the Other Place, I could see so much more. There were so many beautiful things, all around me. A kind of effervescent green fire burned inside one of the vehicles reaching out through its armour to sink fine, brilliant tendrils into the others. Overhead, angelic helicopters flew like birds on wings of light. They didn't fly because of their rotors. That was a lie, I saw that now. Someone cast white brilliance from above, up on a rooftop opposite the building the attack-dog police were clustered around. The light may have illuminated the filthy Other Place, but it still made the world feel better.

I was so glad I'd taken a closer look. It felt so wonderful, just to stand here and drink it all in. Everything made more sense like this. Yes. Everything.

Eventually, a feeling nagged at me. Something was wrong in the middle of all this beauty. It took me a while to pay attention. Longer than I want to admit. But in amongst all this glorious light there was a dark patch that stood out like an ache.

I shook my head, trying to focus past the sheer giddy joy of the tinkertech. There it was. Black-red oil pooling around an ambulance. I shed the Other Place and focussed, returning my senses to a dull wet reality. Water was pooling here, too, but at least it was just rain. Picking my way around a particularly deep puddle, I approached the ambulance.

As it turned out, it wasn't an ambulance. Edging past the armoured SWAT guy who was watching over it, I took a look inside. No beds, no medical equipment. Just several full black body bags, stacked inside. It was just there for moving dead bodies around. It was a refrigerated meat wagon pretending to be an ambulance. If it ever went near a hospital, it'd only be to visit the morgue. I pulled out my camera and took a picture before tucking the Polaroid away. I… I wasn't sure if this was actually illegal, but they definitely had bodies in there.

One of the bodies in particular caught my eye. There's 'a big guy' and then there's 'no real human is built like that'. The other bags were black, but this one was yellow, marked with biohazard symbols. I gulped. It had to be three times broader than me at the shoulders, and even though the plastic coating I could see the bulges of its massively overdeveloped arms.

Had there been some kind of villain-hero shootout here? Now I really wanted a look inside.

Behind me, the harsh police car lights picked out every imperfection of the crumbling redbrick apartment. I considered its cramped entrance. No, there was no way I was getting in there. They had cops and power armour heading in and out all the time, and a temporary swipe-door installed. I'd need to tailgate in, and I didn't know if Isolation actually worked if someone touched me. If I couldn't risk someone brushing up against me, I needed to find another way in.

Poking around, I discovered a fire escape ladder in the alleyway next to the apartment. It was down, and looking up I could see the orange flare of a cigarette. A moment later a cloud of smoke caught the street lighting, as the cop standing up there under the overhanging roof puffed away. I climbed slowly, and checked my footing on each rung. TV never seemed to mention how _scary _it was to climb a ladder in the middle of a rainstorm. I had to pause at the top of the ladder to get my breath back.

I ducked under the black and yellow tape covering the open fire exit, and entered the building. No sealed door here. I guess they wanted the place well ventilated, because I could smell… something in here. A stink that seemed to creep right through my gas mask. The walls were painted a pale beige and looked slightly greasy. I tried to avoid touching them. A moth fluttered around one of the hanging lights, bashing its head into it periodically. Too stupid to realise that the pretty glow wasn't made for it to stare at.

Cops were patrolling these floors, keeping people in their apartments. "Ma'am, please stay where you are," a female cop told a woman holding a baby at one of the doors. "There's an operation going on at the moment. If you just stay here for the moment, it'll be safe."

"But none of the phones are working and even my cell's dead and-"

"Yes, ma'am. That's because we don't want the criminals we're after from calling anyone and calling for reinforcements. We'll turn the phones back on once we think it's safe to do so. It's to keep you safe."

"But my husband is out at work and he'll worry if I don't answer and…"

I passed the two of them and stopped listening in. I had more interesting things to listen out for. Two cops were guarding the stairwell, though they'd probably just decided to wait there so the residents couldn't hear them gossip. Or maybe it was just the designated cop-smoking-zone out of the rain. They both had cigarettes in hand. Creeping up to the edge of the stairwell, I pressed my back to the wall and listened in.

"… what I want to know is, how long've we got to stand around? I really don't want to have to go out in that rain again. I'm still drenched," grumbled one man. He didn't look much older than me. Well, how old people often think I am. Being this tall means people who don't look closely often think I'm at college. He had a bad case of acne and there were pock-marked scars all over his face. "I bet they'll make us go out again just when we're starting to dry out."

"I hear you," the other man said. He took off his hat and ran his hands through his wet iron grey hair. "Trust me, you just get these things sometimes. The PPD and the FBI are on the scene and they're putting out PRTs and PITs and there are paras and choppers overhead, and all you gotta do is stand here and wait while the feds go and stomp around the crime scene shouting at people."

"We're not even doing anything."

"Yeah, that happens. We're basically just here to keep the scene clean while they do the actual work in the basement. Think of it this way – it's not like we have to do much. Just talk to people who want to know why they can't go out and buy powdered milk for their grumpy baby. Could be a lot worse. You don't want trouble when it's a PPD case. If there's trouble, some Jap freak might go and turn into a fucking dragon or some psycho might go pull a man's skeleton out of his body."

There was a pause. "Have… have you ever seen that?" the younger man asked, his voice cracking slightly.

"Let me put it this way: there's a reason I don't ever take patrol routes around Little Tokyo no more."

I grinned to myself. So, whatever brought the cops here had happened down in the basement. That meant I had to go down two floors, but at least I knew where I was going. It wasn't like the perimeter cops would be a problem. Isolation just let me walk right past them.

Or let them walk right past me, I thought, as a patrolling cop came within arm's length without noticing me. I tried to avoid pressing up too tightly against the walls. They really did look gross. I took the stairs down and squeezed my way past the two smokers.

There were more people on the ground floor, and they'd laid plastic sheeting over the floor. There were signs of damage, too. One of the interior walls had a hole blocked by a thin layer of translucent plastic, and I could see bullet holes on the opposite wall. The paint had been stripped away from the walls there, leaving only bare plaster.

That was reality. As for the Other Place?

Death. People had died here. There were four separate pools of black-red oil seeping up through the rotting, ragged plastic sheeting. It was worst around the hole in the wall. Three of the deaths were near it, and the walls around it were burned, charred. I sniffed. The smell of the Other Place was strangely muted compared to normal, but I could smell the simmering, boiling anger that I knew so well from Dad. Someone had been very angry, and people had died. Had something smashed through the wall?

Letters were scrawled on the damaged wall in red, curling around the hole;

_whAt whispeRED in thayr eArs so tHAt tHEy LOst  
thEIr MiNdS0 A fEw scRawWed sCarlEt lEtTErs anD An  
abbatoiR abbatoIr abbatOir abbaToir abbAtoir abBatoir aBbatoir Abbatoir RIOTABBA_

Other words met them, written in another hand;

**STERILISE CONTAIN STERILISE CONTAIN STERILISE  
STERILISE STABILISE STERILISE NORMALISE STERILISE**

Those words weren't misspelt, but there was… something off about them. They were a glossy black that almost seemed to overlay the greasy wallpaper, like they were floating in front of the wall they were written on. I got the gut feeling that there was… I don't know how to put it. It was like there was intent behind them. It was like the difference between random cloud formations looking like a rabbit, and a kid's drawing of a bunny. And yeah, I knew that didn't make much sense, but that was the best comparison I had.

A few people stood out amongst the feds and cops. Some of them were in suits and ballistic vests, and some were in SWAT armour, but they all were stamped with the same glossy writing. Each of them had a word on their forehead – some said **CONTAIN** and some said **SECURE** and others said**CONCEAL**. They were almost as grey and bland and flaking as the doll-like genejacks I'd seen down in the submall. They weren't quite the same – dark water soaked their black suits, leaving patches of dirty ice, and some of them had hands soaked in the black-red oil of death – but they still reminded me of those doll-like things. Unnatural men, machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! That had been one of my parents' favourite films.

I took a few pictures of some of the strange grey men, in case I could look into them later. Maybe you got like that from being a lackey of the government, but that seemed too innocuous. I'd seen grey bland people before, but they'd still had more personality and individual differences than these things. And some of them had killed people.

I'd just like to set one thing straight right now – yes, of course I knew I was breaking into a crime scene. And yes, ever since I'd seen those body bags, I knew people had died here. That was what had lured me into the building in the first place.

People had died here, and I needed to know what was going on if I was going to help. It wasn't like I was interfering in things, I was hidden by Isolation. I knew the FBI used parahuman specialists if they had the right powers, and this was basically the same thing – plus, if I could watch them work, see their powers, I might learn some crimefighting techniques too.

It took me a little while to push myself into moving downward, and even longer to actually get there. They'd put a security door in front of the route down – I couldn't just walk on through. It was probably some kind of anti-parahuman defence to stop… well, people like me. People who couldn't be seen. The black plastic of the frame had been bolted onto the wall, totally out of place next to the faded wallpaper. Eventually, though, someone opened it and I tailgated my way through, following the black-suited agent down into the utility room.

My stomach squirmed as I descended, and I felt my heart skip a beat on the last step. I wasn't meant to be here. Sneaking through a normal building filled with normal cops had been one thing. Down here, everyone was either military or the black-suited federals.

The lighting was bright, but inconsistent – the power had been cut, and everything was lit by free-standing halogen lights which lit the walls and floor in cold blue, powered by a tinkertech fusion cell. In the real world it hummed and glowed. In the Other Place, it sang like an angel. I tried not to bliss out. It was easier this time – I could see more deaths down here, black oil splattered on the ground. Besides, tinkertech seemed to give me less of a rush. _abbatoiR abbatoIr abbatOir abbaToir abbAtoir abBatoir aBbatoir Abbatoir RIOTABBA_ said the walls, and the words were much thicker here – and they crawled and squirmed as if they were alive. Like the bugs moving through filth, like caterpillars under my- I stopped thinking. My heart pounded like a drum. I really wasn't meant to be here. I felt sick – but I'd gone too far to turn back now.

I looked around, cringing. Some of the tumble dryers had been smashed up, spilling their mechanical innards onto the ground. Shuffling forward, I noticed grit under my feet. The yellow tiles of the utility room's floor were covered in concrete dust and fallen plaster. I looked up. There was a hole in the ceiling leading up into one of the apartments – linked to the broken wall where those three people had died, I guessed.

There was a strange smell in the air, one that somehow crept through my gas mask. It was even stronger in the Other Place. It wasn't quite the scent of swimming pools, but it wasn't far from it, if you got what I meant. It made me think of them. That and sickness and doctor's offices and the psych hospital. Like a chemical that tried to cover up filth and didn't quite manage it.

Hands shaking, I took more photos. The hole in the ceiling, the wrecked machines, the places people had died, and the strange grey black-suited men and women who were waving high tech gadgets around. A cherub took the polaroids back to my base, and I started to move on.

A glimmer of light from under one of the wrecked driers caught my attention. The blissful pale green light seeped out, reassuring me that everything wasn't rot and ruin. Keeping my eyes open for anyone who might stumble into me, I quickly made my way to the glowing light, squatting down. Reaching in, my gloved hands found what felt like a plastic package. It was like a thousand green fireflies were trapped in it, and I sighed in amazement. Forcing myself back to reality, it looked like a plastic sample bag filled with white powder. Some kind of tinkertech drug? I turned it over. There was a hand-written note on it. 'Killfast' it said. Some kind of poison?

I didn't know. I took a picture of it and where I'd found it, and sent both the bag and the picture back to my hide-out. Far away from the usual areas I did things, just in case it really was poison. It was just as well I was wearing a gas mask and gloves, I thought to myself. Though the bag had been sealed, so it should be safe.

One door to go. The one which seemed to have the most attention around it. The one which was utterly covered in red letters in the Other Place.

The one which said

**S IX S IX S IX  
S IX S IX S IX  
S IX S IX S IX**

"Who's that?"

I half-turned, only mildly curious. It was one of the suited federals, a young, pale Asian woman wearing a bulky high-collared bulletproof vest and glasses. Both the glasses and something in one of the vest's pockets glowed with the gentle living flame of tinkertech.

Still, there was something about her which drew my attention, like a person badly pasted into a picture after it was taken. She wasn't one of the grey men, no. She looked mostly normal, but there were black feathers in her short, sensible hair and her eyes were inhuman, like a bird. The white shirt under her armour was spotless – cleaner than it was in the real world, even – except for the flecks of death-oil across it. What really made her stand out, though, was the light. It was wrong, the way it fell on her. It was like she was standing in a brighter place than the rest of the room.

She didn't fit. I couldn't see any parahuman glow except from her gear, but… she didn't fit.

"Who?" asked one of the grey men next to her, his eyes scanning over me without any recognition.

"The woman in the gas mask."

"What woman?"

Crap.

The next bits happened pretty much at once. I turned to flee, and her hand went to her earpiece.

"Code Papa-700! All units, we have an unidentified Yellow Papa-700 on site! Go to high alert! PPD units, begin lockdown of area!" I heard as I fled.

My feet hammered up the concrete stairs. How could I have been so stupid? Stupid, stupid! I rammed into the security door and of course it didn't open. Handle! Handle! I yanked at the handle, shoulder burning with pain, until it opened and I almost fell through. I kept just enough presence of mind to slam the door behind me.

The buzzing of radios told me already that I'd really poked the hornet's nest. People were shouting about locking down the exits and not letting anyone out and – I darted for the stairs, past the smoking cops who'd been complaining, even as behind me I heard the basement security door bounce off the wall.

"The Papa's wearing dark clothing and a military gas mask!" I heard behind me. "Eyes wide!"

"So're all the PRT and SWAT guys!" I heard someone shout, and then I couldn't spare attention for anything but running. I took the corner from the stairwell at a dead run, grabbing the frame and swinging around – hands protesting – and then the corridor was ahead, the fire escape wide-open. For once I was grateful for being a beanpole, my long legs eating up the distance and the cops were shouting and I just wanted _out_. The camera banged on its strap against my chest. There were feet behind me coming up the stairwell and I had to go. Get out of sight! Get back in Isolation!

The fire escape door was right ahead of me. I didn't stop for the police tape – I simply ran through it, breaking the yellow tape and looked down, gripping onto the railings.

There were lights down in the alleyway – cops and federals and a suit of power armour. Their flashlights danced over the filthy walls and the fire escape. Crap. They must have already responded. I couldn't climb down, especially not in this rain, and there was no way I could drop without breaking something. The fire escape on the other side wasn't aligned with this one, and trying to jump across in this weather was madness. And that smoking cop was still there, right next to me, staring right at me with a sort of dazed confusion as if something wasn't quite right.

I looked up, desperately looking for an escape. The fire escape across from this one was propped open at the fourth storey. I sank into the Other Place, gritting my teeth so hard they hurt before exhaling an angel. "Tunnel!" I snapped, gasping for breath.

The cop next to me dropped his cigarette in shock and stared. "What're you doing h-" he began, before the angel split the world in half and I darted through. I could taste-smell the locker as my feet squelched on the floor of the corridor. It was somehow even worse this time, oily and greasy. There wasn't time to think about it, though, because I practically fell through the other side of the rift and through the open fire escape door. The camera strap felt like a chain around my neck. I could just rest here and-

"Target's a Papa-320 too!" It was the woman who'd seen me. My lungs were burning, but she wasn't even out of breath. "They're up on the fourth floor – yes, I'm sure!" There was clatter of feet on the metal fire escape, and then another clatter. One directly below me. "Aerial, do you have eyes-on?"

_Bullshit_. I pulled myself to my feet, ignoring the aches from using an angel, and broke into a staggering run even as the clattering below announced that that the fed had just jumped between fire escapes. At night. In the middle of a rainstorm. And was now sprinting up shaky wet metal stairs.

There was a window ahead of me, and I could see the next apartment along through it – and a lit window on that side.

"Corridor!" I croaked out, and for the second time in quick succession the biting cold of the Other Place surrounded me as an angel tore a hole in the world. Staggering, stumbling I emerged from the corridor in the next building along, my gut cramping up. I was still cold. Too cold. The entire building smelt of cheap greasy food and the rot of the locker. I couldn't smell anything else, and each gasped breath brought a fresh wave into my senses.

I looked back, through the window. She'd followed me, and she had a gun. I threw myself down. Two gunshots sounded out and glass shattered down on me. She'd shot at me! Fuck! There wasn't a window at the end of this landing, but I could see a stairwell. The angel had stayed around. "Corridor," I whispered.

This time the corridor was more of a crawlspace. It stank and it was freezing cold and I was on the edge of panic when I made my way through it on my hands and knees. It felt like the locker. I was on the verge of crying and screaming, but I forced myself on, driven by the knowledge that someone with a gun was literally _right behind me_.

My chest already felt like it was bursting and my gas mask was fogging up, but I pushed myself further. Out the other side, I pulled myself upright on the railings. The dirty carpet was a godsend. I'd have been slipping if it hadn't been there. The stairs here led up to the roof – but she'd said something about 'aerial'. They might have drones or cape fliers. Desperately I looked around. Door on my left. Yes. Locked door. Slow her down. Angel time.

I staggered through the Other Place into a brightly lit apartment. The balaclava felt warm and sticky over my scars, and I could taste blood. My arms were hot and throbbing, like they were infected. I'd never used so many angels in quick succession.

Eyes bleary, I took in the new room. A TV was blazing white noise and static over piles of beer cans and ready-made meals, and the old guy who lived here was bent over, thumping it. Wallpaper peeled from the walls revealing rotting plaster underneath, and I was standing in a foul-smelling pool of dark water. No, no, that was just the Other Place intruding in my panic.

Except I could feel the dark water. It was cold, soaking my outer layers, running down my legs. If it was the Other Place, it didn't feel like it normally did.

The man whirled on me. I have no idea what he'd have thought if he could see me. "Who the hell are you?" he demanded. Crap. He _could_ see me. I exhaled, sending a thick grey cloud of apathy his way. It sunk into his mouth and eyes, and his face slumped. He just sat down like a doll whose strings had been cut.

"What did you do to him, Taylor?" the white noise whispered from the TV. "Maybe he won't ever get better. You did that on purpose. Look at you, all stinking and bloody. That's right for you. You belonged in there."

"Shut up!" I shouted at the TV. I staggered over to the windows, gasping for air, dripping water thick with some kind of dirt. I… I knew what it was. It was the gunk at the bottom of the locker. Looking across the street, I could see the apartments on the other side of the street. Police lights illuminated the redbrick apartments in blue.

Behind me, someone banged on the door.

"Open up! This is your one chance to surrender!" shouted the same damn woman. How had she caught up? How had she managed to get between the buildings? How did she know I was in this apartment? She had to be some kind of… of tracking parahuman. Crap. A federal tracker who could see invisible people and chase them down. Of course they'd have a PRT team that could do this kind of thing. Why didn't I _think?_

I made my choice. "Angel," I croaked, sliding up the window. I poked my head out. Down outside the police cordon, I could see a night bus at the stop lights. "Corridor." The dark oval opened next to me.

"Switch to breaching rounds!" the woman shouted. There was a gunshot and then another and then a third, accompanied by the sound of splintering wood. I couldn't help but turn and saw the door shake. The hinges and lock – she'd shot them off! The door was only being held on by the bolts and chains and from the way the door shook, she seemed fully intent on kicking it down.

It was so hard to walk through the Other Place like this. I was so cold and the tunnel seemed longer and longer. A little bit of me just wanted to sit down right here. Maybe the tunnel would close on me, but that didn't seem so bad. I felt terrible. Everything was hurting that could possibly hurt.

Teeth grinding, I forced myself on. I'd been in worse places. I couldn't give up. I wouldn't let myself. My mouth tasted of blood and rot, but I forced myself to reinforce Isolation, butterflies crawling out from between my lips. Maybe she wouldn't see me if it was stronger – and even if she could, other people wouldn't. I just had to get away from her.

I nearly couldn't feel the light and warmth of the nearly empty bus when I emerged, dripping bloody, filthy rot-filled water. I staggered from seat to seat, clinging to the handles on the ceiling, until I reached the driver's blind spot. I didn't think I could run anymore, but it would be too much like surrendering if I didn't at least prepare for it. The lights around me flickered, buzzing like flies. The dark water pooled around me and ran down the windows.

No one watched. No one cared. Good. That was how it ought to be.

The bus jolted into motion, and we were off and away.

My heart was beating like a drum. Would she follow? Somehow? Were there drones in the sky looking for me? I was panicking and hurting and I felt sick, and all I could do was sit here in the blood and rot the Other Place had brought with it, overcome by cold shivers. I peeled off my gas mask, rolled up my balaclava and hyperventilated into my hands, trying to calm down.

It wasn't working. It was only after the bus had travelled several blocks that I remembered I had better ways of calming myself.

Gritting my teeth, I forced myself into the Other Place and nailed my fear to the floor of the bus. Phobia screamed and moaned, unheard by anyone else, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It quickly turned sour.

Now I could look at the situation impassively, and I didn't like what I saw. I was a mess. I was bleeding and in pain, I was drenched in horrible Other Place stuff, and my outfit was ruined. Somehow I had to get myself cleaned up before I went home. And what if they could… could follow the smell or something?

I laughed to myself, bitterly. I'd gone to all that effort to steal those smoke grenades and that armour a few days ago. Hadn't even crossed my mind to use it. I'd just panicked and run away.

"You really fucked that one up," I whispered, hugging myself. "Stupid, stupid, stupid. She saw through Isolation. How did she see through Isolation? No one's managed it before. But why did I go in? Why did I rush in? What was I thinking! Stupid! Stupid!"

Inspiration came as I stared out the opposite window, racking my brains. Houses marked 'To Let' – that meant they were empty. I got off the bus, letting the cold rain beat down on me, and let myself into the unfurnished properties with a cherub. The scars on my legs had opened up, so it hurt to walk, but… I had to get clean. I _had _to. I couldn't live like this. The place I'd chosen had working water and power so I went to the bathroom, dumped my dirty clothes in the bathtub, and took a shower.

The hot water hurt my cuts and reopened scars, but I tolerated it. It was a good pain. It helped banish the ice-cold chill of the Other Place. I was too pale. I mean, too pale even by my standards, and I was sufficiently un-ruddy that other girls had sometimes accused me of being a vampire. I sat down in the shower and watched the hot water turn red as it trickled down the drain.

Eventually I felt warm enough to stand up again. My clothes were ruined. There was no way I could ever get the filth out of them. With only a few regrets, I bundled them up and had a cherub dump them in the bay, gas mask and all. I could afford to buy new ones. A cherub brought me a towel from home, along with a fresh change of clothes. That was one advantage of a limited wardrobe with a lot of black. Dad shouldn't notice I wasn't wearing the same clothes.

The maintenance people had left bleach in here. That'd be useful for cleaning up the place. I coated the bath in bleach so no one could track the blood, then dumped the rest in the shower. Bleach destroyed the DNA in blood. Crime shows had taught me that. I didn't know about the blood from the Other Place, but I'd bled here, so I needed to cover that up.

It was a little – no, not scary. It wasn't scary at all. But it was uncanny how good I seemed to be at disposing of evidence and thinking up lies when I was using my powers to make myself all numb and emotionless like this. Was I a worse person when I didn't have fear holding me back?

Out of curiosity, I thought of how I'd kill someone. Like, hypothetically, Madison. Well, I'd probably hammer her with Blind Justice so she felt incredibly guilty, day and night, and then I'd have something start suggesting that everyone would find out and then I'd-

No! No! I… I couldn't do that! I wasn't like that! I was the good guy! I'd normally be scared to find myself thinking like that, but of course, I _wasn't_scaring myself. Objectively, I could simply do it. Because my fear wasn't here. I didn't have fear of the consequences getting in the way of evaluating the best way to do something.

…fuck my power.

This was dangerous, I thought with my perfectly clear head. Fear kept me away from dangerous situations. If I'd been more scared this evening, I wouldn't have been so stupid as to creep down into the basement. This was a very risky thing to do to myself, because without fear, I'd get myself stuck in idiotic situations like… well, the one I got into today.

I stared down at my bare hands. Weirdly, the open wounds were already closing up. They looked like fresh scars now. They still hurt, but they weren't bleeding. Could I explain that? Maybe. My wounds were still open in the Other Place. So overusing my powers seemed to… to make my body more like the Other Place me. That seemed to make sense. It even explained where the dark water came from. And maybe even why it hurt me. I was channelling the Other Place, and doing that made me more like the wounded "me" that existed there.

I dried myself off, thinking. I really should have been considering other ways to cover my tracks, but I wasn't. Instead, I was thinking about that room. I couldn't even see the cramped bathroom in the house I'd broken into – I was seeing those walls, scribbled with 'S IX S IX S IX'. Not literally seeing them, which was always something to be clear about when talking about my powers, but metaphorically.

But that was the thing. I'd seen the 'S IX S IX S IX' thing before. I knew I had.

Kirsty. The girl back in the psych hospital. The girl who'd looked human – apart from those bloody words carved into her, bleeding through onto her hospital pyjamas. Just like I looked human – apart from the open wounds left by the locker.

Was she a parahuman with powers like mine? Was she responsible for what'd happened down there?

What if the answer to both questions was 'Yes'?


	32. Lines 3-10

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 3.10**

In the end, all the planning I'd done for this weekend was worth nothing. I woke up at about 3am on Saturday morning, and just about managed to stumble through to the bathroom on shaking foal-like legs before I threw up everything in my stomach. I spent the entire weekend in bed with a fever, being fed liquids and ibuprofen by Dad. And vomiting. Yeah, I got a lot of that done, until I was only throwing up bile – which really hurts, incidentally. Even when the fever went down I couldn't stand on my own. "Weak as a kitten", Dad said.

It was Tuesday before I had the courage to use my powers again. I was scared of what I'd see, but the nagging curiosity and boredom managed to overcome my fear. I couldn't even enjoy being away from school. I just couldn't lie there, too weak to even hold up a book, any longer. I had things to do. I had to _do_ things. I had to know what had happened down at that apartment near Chinatown.

Of course, they'd cleaned it up by then. The feds and their grey men were gone, replaced by construction workers who were just fixing the place. Watcher Doll couldn't find anything interesting, so I fell back on more conventional means of investigation. I managed to totter downstairs, pausing for a breather half way down the stairs, and dug through the papers in the recycling bin.

I found a page 7 half-page story in Sunday's Bay Times about a raid on a black market factory near Chinatown, which had been making illegal tinkertech drugs. Monday's paper had some people writing in to talk about how illegal immigrants were bringing in crime and how they needed to crack down on them and how the West Coast states were pushing them over to the east and how we needed internal border controls to stop the illegals flooding this way, etc etc.

It made me think. I'd found something which might have been drugs – the bag labelled Killfast. Which meant that they were covering up the truth, using the truth. How many other news stories were lying without lying?

I had time to think about that as I slowly and laboriously stumbled back up the stairs, one step at a time. I flopped back on my bed, and drifted into an uncomfortable doze. As I slept, I was chased through endless corridors by a three-headed monster that sometimes seemed to be three girls instead. I waded through old blood as they crawled over the ceiling, laughing at me. The cold was like the Other Place, a metal surface sapping heat at a touch.

When I woke, all I could think was that I'd had enough. It was getting dark outside – just another sign my sleep cycles were ruined – and that meant another sleepless night ahead. Maybe I could force my nightmares onto Cry Baby, so it'd have them instead of me. I couldn't let dreams ruin everything.

It was Thursday by the time I was really recovered, and Dad was still reluctant to let me out of the house. He wanted me to just take the last two days off, to make sure I was better. It should have been tempting, but I just wanted to be out of the house, even if that meant going to school.

Even school was better than lying there, being stalked by nightmares which didn't particularly care if I was asleep or awake. Nightmares of the locker. Nightmares of the Other Place. Nightmares of what I'd seen down by the docks. Nightmares of being chased by black-clad crow-women who wouldn't stop and wouldn't give up, no matter how far I ran. My subconscious had a lot of time to fill, and a lot of things to fill it with.

Stupid powers. God. I'd never pushed them like that before. How many tunnels had my angels torn open, one after the other? Normally just one left me feeling queasy and cold. Part of me felt I had to work on improving my distance, so I wouldn't need to use so many. Most of me never ever wanted to feel the bone-deep cold of those corridors again.

That wasn't really an option, though. I knew I'd need them. I had a lead on that strange S IX writing, after all. I'd seen it before. The funny thing was that the cherubs couldn't find Kirsty.

No, wait, the other word. Not funny. _Weird_. Because I knew what she looked like and I knew her name. That was normally enough for a cherub to find her. And even if it failed one time, usually if I tried again after a few hours I'd manage it. I knew she had a TV in her room, so Watcher Doll should have been able to find her and it couldn't, either.

I'd like to think it was just a question of 'wrong address'. Maybe she just wasn't in the psych hospital anymore? I didn't think so, though. My cherubs had found Lew Chong, and I'd had no idea where he was. They'd found my mother's flute, and that wasn't even a person. So either I had a wrong name somehow, or something freaky was going on.

I thought about it all through school on Thursday. I knew what I had to do. I just didn't want to do it. I was scared. It hurt to admit it, but it was true. People had died in that apartment building – trained soldiers or cops. I was just a teenage girl. A somewhat sickly teenage girl, who wasn't even in very good shape.

I wished there was someone I could talk to. Someone who understood what I saw. But who could I talk to? Dad? Tell him that I saw things that were literally out of nightmares even when I was awake, and that I'd been lying to him about… well, everything? Leave an anonymous tip-off as Panopticon? To who? With what proof?

In… in movies and stuff, superheroes always had some magically trustworthy friend who would keep their secret, and be there for them to lean on, and maybe help out with the legwork. But those kinds of people didn't exist in real life. I wish they did, so much. I'd wished that even before I got my powers, but people just aren't that reliable. I didn't have anyone close enough to share my secrets, and even if I did, what if they turned on me? The closest things I had to friends were a girl I sat next to sometimes, and girls I'd met in a literal asylum.

I made the call.

"Hi, you've reached Sam's phone! I'm not here right now, so-"

I patiently waited for the bleep, a little relieved I'd only have to talk to an answerphone.

"Hi, Sam. It's Taylor. Um… are you still going to see Leah this weekend? Because if you are, is the offer of a ride there still open?"

Saturday dawned bright and sunny. The bad weather from last weekend had cleared entirely, and the sky was a deep azure scattered with wispy high altitude clouds. It was even warm enough for t-shirts. I didn't wear one, of course, but I could have, if I'd wanted.

Nature had no sense of the dramatic, I grumbled to myself. Here I was, headed to a mental health unit to investigate a lead on a mass murder, and _now_the weather chose to improve? Despite the climate's refusal to work with the pathetic fallacy, I found myself in the back of an expensive and nearly silent electric car, peacefully listening to Sam chatter away as their chauffeur drove us out of town.

Yes, Sam had a chauffeur. That just about said it all, didn't it? I was half-surprised they didn't have one of those smart cars that drove themselves.

"… and I've been talking all the time and I haven't asked you a thing about you! I'm so sorry! I just get a bit talky when I'm nervous! How've you been?"

"So basically, I spent all last weekend throwing up, and got wiped out for most of this week," I said. "Guess it must have been flu or some stomach bug. 'Least Dad didn't get it too, so it's probably not catching."

"Poor you," Sam said, sitting to my right. She was wearing boyish trousers and a zipped-up brown leather jacket, which left her pixyish with her short hair. She was distracted and fretting, for whatever reason. I didn't even need my powers to see it – and when I had checked in the Other Place, she was literally blurred with nervous energy. Her pill-chains seemed to be holding, though. Slightly weaker than last time, but still strong.

"Pretty much," I said. "So, yeah. That was my last week."

She sighed. "Well, I can't exactly beat that at misery poker," she said drily. "Yeah, my last week was pretty meh, you know? School was school, the English Lit essay I've got is being a pain in the ass – seriously, is there anyone who likes Shakespeare literally anywhere?"

I sort of didn't mind him. Well, that much. Mostly now that I'd moved classes. English with Mr Singh was pretty good, really.

"Also, it's totally unfair on Lady Macbeth," Sam added, mock-pouting.

"Please tell me if you identify with her, and I'll make sure I never turn my back on you when you have a knife," I said drily.

"See! Slander! She didn't even stab anyone!"

I snorted. "Heh. Fair enough. I'll just make sure I don't get between you and... like, being declared homecoming queen."

She laughed, though it sounded a bit bitter. "Yeah, I think you're safe there," she said. "So, yeah. Got to force myself to finish that stupid essay before Dad gets back from his stupid trip with his friends to Quiet Lake."

"Quiet Lake?"

"Boring-ass town up in the mountains. It's quiet. There's a lake. They were literally the most inventive people ever in the old days when naming places. Like this place. Brockton Bay. Which to say, it's a town by a brook by a bay. Genius."

I knew that already, of course.

"And Dad's a fitness fanatic and goes off cycling and canoeing and stuff with his friends. When I was younger he used to drag me along. Boring. So boring. And…" her phone rang, "… urgh, hold on a mo."

I leant against the window as Sam talked to her mother. Apparently she'd promised to call her as soon as she was there, and Sam was very patiently explaining that no, she hadn't forgotten and the reason she hadn't called was that she wasn't there yet. In front my eyes, the depot stores and the out-of-town malls built along the highway whizzed by. Forested hills loomed behind them, forming a natural valley which led down into the bay. And also trapped the fog and led to miserable weather. Thanks a lot, hills.

Once again, my thoughts drifted to what I was about to do. And who I was going to see.

A mysterious girl in a mental hospital. I'd seen markings on her that had freaked me out before I'd seen them copied in a murder scene. A scene thhe government had brought out the iron fist to investigate. She was in a place I really didn't want to return to. I'd have to be – hah! – crazy to go there myself.

And yet…

… there was that damn phrase again. Well, why didn't I just tell the PPD? It would be the sensible thing to do. The SIX SIX SIX I'd seen down by the Bay had been at a murder scene. Kirsty might be a dangerous parahuman, a psycho who broke out of hospital to kill people! The crazy girl turning out to secretly be a murderer wouldn't exactly be hard to believe. It happened all the time in books.

When it came down to it, though… I didn't know for sure. I couldn't just set the government on her without any proof – and even if I tried, all I could tell them was 'in my crazy visions, she had crazy writing on her'. Either they'd ignore it, or worse, they'd send in all the cops and soldiers and grey men and freaky crow-woman agents straight to the psych hospital. Or even worse, straight to _me_.

I couldn't risk being wrong again. I'd be directing people who might shoot first and ask questions later to a girl whose only 'crime' had been that she wasn't quite right in the head. What if those markings didn't come from inside her? What if she'd been attacked by whoever had attacked the building, and those were like mental scars? I knew I wasn't perfect at interpreting the Other Place. Who knew what I was missing?

I couldn't be responsible for setting the police on an innocent person. Since I couldn't send a doll, I'd need to check her out in person. Even though I really, really didn't want to. But when it came down to it, my 'I didn't want to' didn't hold up when someone's life was on the line, so I just had to grit my teeth, nail my fears to the ceiling and woman up.

We pulled off the freeway and started heading into the woods, following the narrower roads that wound their way to the hospital. I stared out the window at the old tall evergreen trees, feeling so much better than the last time I'd made this visit. It wasn't hard. Last time I'd just been feeling sick and scared and nervous. It was such a relief knowing I could just leave any time. I smiled to myself. In summer, the Maine fogs would make these woods a nightmare to drive through. Classic horror country. I'd need to see if there were any local myths about headless horsemen or witches.

Of course, when we arrived I was reminded that this wasn't a place you'd use words like 'gothic, 'looming' or 'raven-haunted' to describe. Edgar Allen Poe hadn't been around to write melodramatic poetry about it. The chauffeur parked the car while Sam and I headed inside. The familiar flowery scent with a hint of antiseptic spray hit my nose. Yes. I was back.

The experience was different as a visitor, rather than an in-patient. Everything was much more relaxed, and since Leah wasn't viewed as a self-harm risk we only got an orderly asking if we were carrying any contraband.

"Oh! Hi, Sam! And Taylor too! Isn't that nice?" It was Hannah, the woman who'd been responsible for looking after me when I'd been a resident here. "Leah will be so happy you're here. She's been really looking forwards to this all week," she said to Sam, before turning to me. "And you're a nice surprise, too. She's been a little down recently. It's the boredom, I'm afraid. It gets to people."

Hannah hadn't changed. The Other Place told me that she was still a shrivelled-up corpse, tired and heartbroken and old. And despite that – I sighed to myself – she'd been more helpful and more caring than most of the school. That might have been her job, but it was the teachers' job to keep students safe, and look how that turned out.

Sam smiled back at her. "Well, I brought the books she asked for."

"That'll be good. I've never seen someone read like she does," Hannah said, shaking her head. "She doesn't have the energy to do much else."

Sam frowned. "She told me she was eating better," she said, shoulders hunching.

"Slightly better, but… the damage is there. And she's been doing this to herself for too long, so," Hannah spread her hands helplessly, "she has a long recovery ahead of her. She's lucky she has you as a friend, Sam – but it's not fair on you when you have your own challenges ahead of you."

Sam quickly began to reassure her that it wasn't a problem at all, and Hannah just smiled, tiredly. "Anyway, come on," she said, leading us through familiar corridors. There was a smell there that hadn't been there before. It was smoky and acrid, like burning electronics, but with odd hints of perfume and ozone.

"Do you smell that?" I asked Sam.

"Smell what?"

"Smells like… a fire," I said without thinking.

She sniffed. "Not really – but I can't really smell much at the moment. I'm all clogged up."

Hannah sniffed the air. "It's probably just because you got out of the cold or something," she observed.

Inwardly, I cursed. I shouldn't have mentioned that – the smell didn't seem to exist outside of the Other Place. "Yeah, that makes sense. Probably just a heater."

It wasn't lunchtime yet, so people were just using the canteen to sit around. A group of too-thin girls about my age were sitting around a table in one corner, so we took one on the opposite end. The butterfly painted on the wall still drifted over its surface in the Other Place, giving out watery, multi-coloured light.

"Sam! Taylor!" Leah called out, looking up from a book. She really was too thin, I thought to myself. It was even more obvious than the last time I saw her, because Sam and I were dressed in outside clothes while she wore the uniform pyjamas and slippers. The cotton clothes hung off her frame, and her head was too large for her neck. She was the same in the Other Place, just taken it to extremes.

It… it couldn't be good that her real world form was so much like her appearance in my personal hellscape. The same was true for me, but I looked almost normal even in the Other Place. She looked so thin and unhealthy that it was the other way around, like the monstrousness of the Other Place was creeping in. I wanted to do something to help, but I was scared of making things worse. I didn't have the fine control to help someone who was already fragile. It would be easy to make her feel hungry, but would that actually help her? Especially when I wasn't around all the time to reinforce it.

I forced myself to smile. "Hey," I said.

"Leah," Sam exhaled, rushing in for a hug. Yes, I noted – Leah's arms were stick-like. "I've missed you!"

"Missed you too!"

"I got you the books you wanted? And how are you? Have you been eating properly? You should, you know!" Sam started churning out a relentless torrent of questions and talk about people I didn't know, barely letting Leah get a word in edgewise. It was intensely embarrassing to sit through. And yes, I did feel a bit jealous, if I had to admit it. Once, Emma would have been like that for me. Once.

"I just need to go to the bathroom," I said after a while, when Sam paused for a breath. "You'll still be here?"

"Yeah, yeah. So, uh… oh yes, I was talking with your older sister and she said…"

I made my way to the bathroom, relieved myself, and then checked myself in the mirror. Well, really I was plucking up the courage for what I was about to do. I wasn't great at talking to people, but I needed to pump Hannah for whatever information I could get about Kirsty so I wasn't going in blind. That meant I needed an excuse for why I was going to talk to her.

What could I possibly talk to her about? Well, me, of course. Great.

Awkwardly, I knocked at her beige door.

"Come in," Hannah said.

Her office looked tidier than last time I'd seen it. There was a new glowing cube paperweight, which gave out light in a reassuring sunlight-colour. She'd replaced one of her filing cabinets, too.

"H-hi," I said, and wished I hadn't stammered.

"Oh, hi Taylor," she said. "Is there a problem? Is everything all right?"

"Um," I began. "I… um…"

Dammit. I took a breath, and exhaled Phobia. Her whimpers didn't touch me. It seemed to be getting easier the more I practiced. And with her out of the way, things were clearer. Hannah wouldn't talk to me about Kirsty normally, so I'd have to ease my way in. I sent a piping worm of Sympathy to whistle into her ears. The little thing made of sea-corroded silver sang to her.

"I wanted to just ask… could you recommend any books on dealing with social anxiety?" I said confidently, using my cover story. "I just thought you might know."

She flashed a smile at me, tucking a lock of her brown hair back. "Oh, sure thing. You can sit," she said, pulling out a printout from a pile on her desk. She came around to my side of the desk. "It's a common enough issue that I just made something for it," she said, with a self-effacing shrug. "How's it been? Since you got out of here, I mean? Have things been better in school?"

I bit my lip. "It's been a bit better," I said, in the clarity I had when Phobia wasn't free. "I mean, I sort of talk to more people than I did. It's still not easy, but things worked out after they moved me so I wasn't in the same classes as any of the bullies."

"That's good."

"Yeah."

"And… um…" she looked slightly wary. "I'm just asking this to be sure, for your own safety. Have you been having any suicidal thoughts?"

I shook my head. "No." I smiled weakly. "Even when I got a stomach bug last weekend and was up all night throwing up until it hurt," I added. "I only_felt _like I was going to die. I didn't want to."

"Ouch. You're over that?"

"Feeling better, yes. It wiped me out for a few days, but I'm over it now." I shrugged. "Not sure if it was food poisoning or just some bug, but… bleargh."

"That sounds painful," she agreed. "And… uh, the nightmares?"

"Only every few nights," I said. I didn't say I wasn't sleeping to avoid them. She'd have just misunderstood what I was doing. "I try not to use any sleeping pills unless I have to." I shuddered. "I read about the side effects."

"So some improvement. That's good. Just keep track of them, and tell someone if they're getting in the way of having a normal life."

Normal life. Hah. What about my life was normal?

Hannah leaned forwards slightly. "So, have you made any new friends?" she asked.

I considered the question. There were a few people from my new classes who were safe enough. I could sit next to them and know they wouldn't cause trouble, and they'd talk to me a bit. Lucy was probably the closest because we were doing a project together thing, but there were others, like Mark in Biology and Taym in Math. "I get on with some of the new people," I said, carefully. "I'm not sure if they're close enough to count as friends." I paused deliberately. "That's why I thought to ask about this."

"That's a good idea," she agreed. She looked me in the eye. "It's very easy for people to get into the habit of avoiding problems. People try to avoid getting into the position where the thing they're scared or worried about comes up. But this means we never challenge our fears. We just let them control us. I was really scared of dogs when I was younger. I still don't like them, but I used to cross the road to avoid someone who was walking their dog in the street. It took me a long time to force myself to realise that not every dog I saw was a barely controlled animal that might go for me."

"Mmm hmm."

"Running from your problems is so easy, but it doesn't make them go away," she added.

Well, that was all very well, but that wasn't what I was here for. It didn't even help me start asking about Kirsty. I cleared my throat, pretending to be nervous. I couldn't just bring her up out of nowhere – Hannah had to be willing to help, and that meant she couldn't see anything odd about what I was doing. I needed an idea... no, I needed an Idea. Some kind of little construct that could get into her head. She _wanted _to talk to me about Kirsty. She_needed _to. Something that could squirm right into her brain, even more intimately than Sympathy. A little pale grey centipede like the ones which got on my window in cold weather, maybe.

I exhaled, and it took shape sitting on Hannah's collar. It was a filthy little thing, fleshy and grey but smeared with the red rust of the Other Place. I watched as it crawled over the grey skin of Hannah's Other form, and winced a little bit as it wriggled into her ear.

"Everything's okay," she said, obviously misunderstanding my shiver. She was frowning at me, and looked a little confused.

"Actually, I was wondering a little bit about Kirsty," I said, dropping back into normalcy. "I never did get her full name."

"Kirsty?" Hannah asked blankly. Her lips were slightly parted, and she looked enthusiastic… but somehow confused as well?

What? No no no, this wasn't what should be happening. "The Kirsty in this ward? The one who was here with me?" I prompted. She still looked blank, so I breathed out a flock of CRT cherubs, holding TVs in their hands. 'Trust Taylor. Talk to her. Tell her the truth', they sung in static-filled radio broadcasts. It grated at my teeth.

She blinked. "Yes. Yes. Sorry, Kirsty. Yes, I don't think you really spent any time around her. Why are you wondering?"

That was further proof something _weird _was going on, because I couldn't see any parahuman powers in use. There were no bright tendril in Hannah's head stopping her from remembering Kirsty, but it was her job to be responsible for the people in this section. I couldn't believe she didn't remember her. "What's her full name?" I asked.

She frowned, clearly wracking her brain. Her brain with my Idea in it. "I don't… I don't know it off the top of my head," she said slowly. "She's always been just 'Kirsty' to me."

"So she's new?" I asked. She was the one perched on the desk and I was sitting in the comfy chair, but it _felt _like I was the one in charge here.

"N-no," Hannah said, a quaver in her voice. "She's been here as long as I've been here. Four years. It's just… she's quiet."

I swallowed. "So… she must have been twelve or so when she was put in here," I said, dull horror in my voice. A quarter of your life in this place. God. How horrible. What must have happened to her if she'd been committed here so young – and with no improvement?

"I suppose so," Hannah said vaguely.

"You sound confused."

"Well… I… no, yes. I must be mixing her up with someone else. Yes, she must have been very young when she was sent here. She doesn't respond well when I talk to her, but I try to help."

I folded my hands on my lap. "That's good. I just feel so sorry for her," I said. I did feel sorry for her. But I also had to make her feel that this conversation was a little bit normal. I paused. "What was her full name again? So I can be polite?"

"Oh, right." Hannah looked lost. "I'm sure I have it around here somewhere." She began to rummage through paperwork. "Yes, it's in here somewhere." She smiled at me as she went to check the filing cabinet. "I keep on losing things, you know. I went and tided the place up recently and still things go missing."

I doubted that was true – not like this, at least. The way her mind seemed to skip over thoughts of Kirsty reminded me of Isolation. Not quite the same, because I couldn't see any butterflies, but… similar.

"Ah, yes, here's her file," Hannah said. "The ink's faded quite a bit, but… Oldan? Oldham? Or maybe that's an 'I', so that might be Oidan. I'm so sorry, I haven't had my 11am coffee yet. I've been trying to cut down because I've been drinking enough that I've been getting heart palpitations. But thank you for getting me to look at this – if the ink's fading like this, I'll need a new copy. I'll make a note of it," she said, casting around for a pen. She gave me a vague smile. "So I hope what I said about social anxiety helps?"

I wasn't going to get much more from her, obviously. She just didn't seem to be able to think about Kirsty for too long. "You've certainly given me a lot to think about," I said. "Thank you very much." I shook her hand. "Thank you for the sheet of books. I'll see if any of them are in my local library."

She stopped looking for a pen, and put the file back in the cabinet. "That's a good idea," she said. "Some of them are a bit pricy. I'm glad I could be of help."..

"You were," I said. I said my goodbyes, and stepped out, sinking into the Other Place. "Cherub," I said. "Bring me that file."

The little broken china doll vanished and reappeared, Kirsty's file in hand. I checked it was hers, and then tucked it up my jumper, taking it off to the bathroom to read in peace.

And it was an interesting read. It wasn't just something messing with Hannah's mind – the ink genuinely was faded, as if it was really old, or someone had left it out in the sun. It was even handwritten rather than printed out, and not in biro. I could barely make out her name. It was probably 'Kirsty Grace Oldham', although whoever had written this had seemed confused themselves – it had been crossed out and rewritten a few times, even on this formal document. Date of birth, date of admission – I didn't know. The pen had leaked over them with an _awfully convenient _ink blot which left them totally illegible. Next of kin – 'NONE'. That said all sorts of things, none of them nice.

I flicked through. It wasn't just Hannah who'd been updating this file. Far from it. There were notes in at least four different hands on the rear page. None of them had written very much, but there were a few dates and… I frowned. '99? She'd been in here for over a decade? Maybe I'd been underestimating her age? She could be a short, baby-faced twenty, I guessed. Those horrible scars made it really hard to tell. I guess I'd just assumed she was the same age as the other girls in the ward.

As for symptoms? There wasn't much detail here – some mentions of 'social phobias' and 'schizophrenia' and 'nightmares', but nothing which told me what happened to her. Notably, someone had written in red pen 'this patient is not violent' which at least indicated that she wasn't killing people – well, unless everyone just forgot that she'd done it.

How was she doing that trick? It didn't seem quite as strong as Isolation, but I couldn't detect it, and it must have made documents fade too.

I had a cherub carry the document back, and then washed my hands again. They felt… sooty. Maybe I was just reacting to the smell of smoke in the Other Place, but my hands felt gritty and icky.

"Sorry about that," I told Sam and Leah when I got back. "I just had to ask Hannah something after I got out of the bathroom."

"Huh? Oh, sure," Sam said. That actually hurt. She probably hadn't even really noticed I was missing. Not really. Leah certainly hadn't, because she was in her own personal happy place sorting through the rucksack of new books Sam had brought her.

"Did I miss anything?" I tried.

"Not really. You don't go to Arcadia so…" Sam shrugged, "wouldn't really mean anything to you."

"Fair enough," I said. It made sense, after all. It wasn't like I wanted to be here in the first place. I just needed a ride here to find Kirsty.

"So, what have you been up to, Taylor?" Leah asked me, with a smile. "Come on. You've got to have been having more fun than me here. All I get is them bitching at me to eat more and catch-up work sent to me."

I coughed. "Nothing really special," I blatantly lied. "They moved around all my classes to get away from the bullies, so… uh, that's working out okay. Otherwise… um, I don't really have many friends or get up to much exiting." It wasn't like I could talk about being a cape who was trying to track down criminals. An idea hit me. "I got some new books. Have you read any of James Brandon's stuff?"

Leah tilted her head, coiling a lock of hair around her finger as she thought. "He did that series about… like, those people in New York, right?"

"Yeah. New book from him."

"Ah." Leah frowned. "I didn't like his stuff much," she said critically. "It was all maudlin and confused 'using long words' for 'good writing'. And it was just transparent how certain things were designed to pull right at the heartstrings. Like, come on. What do you think I am, twelve? That kind of writing's really obvious and I find that detracts, yeah? I mean, come on. Just try respecting your audience a little!"

… I quite liked his books. "Yes," I lied. "Pretty much what I thought."

"I should have the latest Trael – Ina Trael, have you read her stuff? – book around here. Now that's better."

"What genre?" I asked.

"Well, this one is urban fantasy. Although-"

Above us, the lights in the canteen dimmed and started to hum.

"Another brownout?" Sam said, disgust in her tone. "Honestly, what're they playing at?"

"They're daily here," Leah said morosely. "They always seem to happen when there's something good on TV. Or when I'm trying to read."

"Wow? Daily? They're not anywhere near as bad back home."

"I don't remember any brownouts when I was here," I contributed. Of course Sam got better power. I didn't say anything. Everyone knew rich areas and businesses got preferential power flow.

Leah nodded. "Yeah, they started after the fire in the kitchens. They've been getting worse. I think the cables must've got damaged or something or there's a problem with some… like, fuses or something. And I guess this place is out of town and doesn't get as much power from the grid anyway," she suggested.

All at once, all the televisions in the room and the radio and the announcer system turned on. The sound of static crackled through the cafeteria. I waited for an announcement, but nothing happened.

"That's weird," Leah said uncomfortably.

"Must've tripped a fuse or something," Sam said confidently.

Yes. It was weird. And all the hair was standing up on the back of my neck so I didn't think Sam was right. I only felt like this with my scars aching and cold shivers running up and down my limbs when there was some kind of power being used.

I sunk into the Other Place and-

Oh.

I was surrounded by soft, lavender mist, thick enough that I could barely see Sam's burned-and-frozen silhouette or Leah's bobble-headed maw. Other shapes drifted behind them, totally obscured by the mists. The smell of ozone and burning electrics and perfume was stronger now, too.

I'd seen this mist before, just once, on the first morning I'd been here. I'd almost forgotten about it. That had been when I was just getting used to playing around with the Other Place, and I'd seen so many strange new things that it just seemed like background weirdness. Back then, I hadn't even known how to do things with the Other Place. I didn't have the tools I had now.

"Not this time," I breathed. The Other Place was mine! It was ugly, yes, but it was honest. It showed me things as they really were, even when I didn't want to see them. No one got to hide things in it from me! I drew in a breath through gritted teeth, and held it. I thought of tearing and shredding, and the sordid truths that my powers revealed to me. When I finally released it, a storm front of stinking blackness howled into the soft mist and blew it away.

I was surrounded. Not by people, by the things which had been hiding in the lavender fog. They looked like angels, at first glance. Beautiful, winged stone statues, like you might see in a church. Then I looked closer and I could see that they were fire-blackened, and the stone was more like an insect's shell. It covered what was underneath, as long as they stayed still.

They all turned their heads towards me, and I shuddered as I saw the bloody, fresh meat at the joints, hidden under their sooty exterior.

The Other Place smouldered all around me. It wasn't mist, I realised. It was smoke. Perfumed lavender smoke. That was what the smell was. The reflection of the world wasn't ablaze right now, but it had been recently… and it could be again at any moment. Cinders were scattered like glowing glitter on the sooty walls, and I could see reflected firelight down the corridor leading to the bathrooms. Around me, though, the fires were smothered by the cold dark water that lay on the ground and the damp crawling on the walls.

The burned angels tried to keep away from that wetness. Away from me. They formed a half-circle around me, turning ruined, burned faces to follow me.

And then the static on the televisions resolved into a winged figure, a blackened golden mask covering its face. Blood dripped from its mouth. It started to talk to me.

"She's waiting for you," said the masked angel on the screens.

"She's been waiting for you a very long time," sang the announcement system in the same voice.

"Come find her", they chorused.

The angels moved aside, forming an honour guard. Sooty hands clasped stone swords. Chipped marble wings were folded back.

I turned my head back to the familiar monsters sitting next to me. Leah's wide open eyeless mouth stared back. "What is it?" she asked, voice oozing hunger. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

I laughed, a little too high and shrill. "I'll go find someone, see if they know when the power is coming back on." I looked around at the angels, "Why don't you go find somewhere by the windows? I… I get headaches when the light goes like this, so… uh, I need natural light and I need to find someone and… yeah, just be a moment." I had to get away from them.

Suspicious fires? And now fire-blackened angels. Not a coincidence. If Kirsty was causing the fires, then I had to get her angels away from people.

"… are you all right?" Sam said. "You sound a bit…"

I let out a long slow breath, which split into two Ideas. "I'm fine," I insisted as the many-legged Ideas squirmed into their heads.

"Well, if you're sure…"

Wow. This really was handy. Why hadn't I tried this before? It was just a logical expansion of the way I could make people _feel _what I wanted them to, really.

The perfumed smoke mixed with familiar damp rot and blood as I hurried off, and together the scents filled my nostrils as I moved through decaying corridors. I was scared – Phobia had wormed free. Right now, I felt like I needed some fear. Charred angels flanked me, keeping pace. It made me feel like a prisoner being marched to the electric chair. As a precaution, I exhaled out not one, but two angels. It'd hurt to actually use them, but it was better to have them now than risk not having them if I had to run away.

That made the other angels retreat. I didn't think the burned angels liked my barbed-wire angels.

Why were they both angels, anyway? I'd made up the barbed-wire angels because… well, they were a more powerful version of my cherubs. I hadn't planned them. They'd just _happened_.

Dark water squelched under my feet. The walls smouldered. Smoke fled from me and my angels. And one by one, as I wasn't looking at them, the other angels vanished. Soon, only two were left, standing on either side of a door.

I knocked.

There was no response. I took a breath, and left the Other Place. Maybe if I couldn't see her angels, they wouldn't be able to hurt me. Hah. No. Didn't work that way with mine. But I just needed to see things properly.

I knocked again. Still no response.

After a decent pause, I eased the door open, flanked by my unseen barbed-wire angels. She was in her room, lying on the bed in the pyjamas everyone here wore. I'd have thought she was asleep if her eyes hadn't been open. Her breathing was soft and shallow.

"Hello?" I tried.

She didn't answer. I took a closer look, trying to familiarise myself with her. Messy, short-cut mousy brown hair. Plump, and a bit below average height. She was a bit older than me if I had to guess, but she had a round babyish face that meant maybe I was over-correcting for it. She stared up at the ceiling, eyes watery, reddened and bloodshot. She didn't look at me.

Then there were her scars. The scars on her face were different from mine. Mine were self-inflicted, shallow cuts from my fingernails which had got infected. They'd healed quite well, and I could cover up the obvious red marks on my face with makeup. Her scars were much deeper and much… much more _vicious_. They had to have been done with a knife or glass or something sharp, and they were too straight to be anything other than deliberate.

It almost looked like someone had been trying to draw something. Or write something. I shivered.

I stepped inside fully and took a look around, easing the door shut behind me. I didn't want anyone overhearing what we might say in here.

I'd never visited Kirsty's room when I'd been here. I hadn't interacted with her at all. If I had, I'd have understood one of the things that had puzzled me in the early days.

She'd decorated all the walls. Greens and browns and yellows stretched half-way up the walls, each brush stroke clearly meant to be a blade of grass. There were animals and insects, too, done childishly – like the blob of red and black that was clearly meant to be a ladybug. Above the green there was sky blue and fluffy white clouds – and above that, on the ceiling, there were angels. Celestial choirs stared down on anyone who entered the room, with blobby eyes and crudely enthusiastic wings.

Inside this room in a psychiatric hospital, she'd painted what the Sistine Chapel would have looked like if Michelangelo had possessed the art skills of a small child. She must have been the one who'd painted the butterflies in the canteen. They looked just the same. I guessed that somehow her weird power meant no one had noticed what she'd done to her room.

Could they even see the painting in the canteen?

I gritted my teeth and sunk into the Other Place. The room lit up with surreal, mad firelight over which the pictures floated like holograms. It wasn't the serene, beautiful flame of other parahumans. It was something broken and raw and untamed, something that would burn me if I got too close. Or perhaps I'd extinguish it, because even as I watched the rot and rust of the Other Place sunk in, extinguishing the fire and flaking paint away from the walls to expose the bare concrete rimmed with soot. The fire didn't retreat all the way, though. I was the intruder here.

This wasn't my Other Place.

Kirsty sat up then, swinging her legs off the bed. She looked at me, and her eyes went to one barbed wire angel, and then the other. Her eyes didn't stay on me for too long. She kept on looking and then flinching away. The blood on her chest oozed S IX S IX S IX through her hospital pyjamas. I stared back at her, aware that my own wounds on my limbs and face were oozing blood.

She was the only other person I'd seen who looked almost human in the Other Place. Human, but… marred. Scarred. Hurt.

"Hello?" I tried again. I stood surrounded by decay and dampness. She sat amidst fire and soot. "Kirsty?" The perfumed smoke burned at my throat. I could barely smell the rot of the Other Place, for perhaps the first time ever.

Her breath sped up, catching in her throat. She looked away, her hands tightening around the side of her bed and her knuckles whitening.

I wasn't sure what to say. Or to do. She could see my angels, so I couldn't use Sympathy on her. I hadn't realised how much I'd come to rely on my powers in circumstances like these. Just talking to people.

"I like what you've done with the walls," I tried. "Did you paint them yourself?"

She caught my eye for a moment, and nodded mutely. I waited for a response, but there was none.

"Do you know why I'm here?"

She nodded.

"You do?" I asked, surprised. "So… so you know about the S-I-X thing I found? How do you-"

She flinched, violently, at the mention of S-I-X. All the hair on the back of my neck stood on end as she cowered, and there was a sudden crackle of electricity. The television made a sound like a malfunctioning generator, then gave out a loud bang and a blinding flash. The smell of smoke overcame the lavender, and I blinked tears from my eyes. Had something come _out_ of the CRT? I hadn't seen it, and perhaps that was a good thing. But I still wanted to know.

"Wh- what was that?" I asked, voice tight. My own barbed wire angels had moved in front of me, without any orders, to block whatever it was. I dropped back into reality for a moment, and the room stank of ozone. More worryingly, there was a hole in the tv-screen.

Like something had really clawed its way out. In the real world.

Kirsty shook her head violently. She was trembling. Scared.

"I found something," I told her. "In… in Brockton Bay. Down near the docks. Just south of Chinatown. It was all over the walls of…" I paused. She had to know what the Other Place was, right? She saw it. "The S-I-X thing, the six thing was all over the walls there in the other world. The one I can see. The one you can see. I can see it on you. What's the link?"

She refused to meet my eyes now. She just huddled up into a ball, covering her face with her legs. I could feel the tension rise in the air, building up like a pressure inside my head. It felt _hot_. Like the fires that surrounded her.

Mysterious fires. Blackouts. Power surges. And no one remembered her. How long had it been since someone had really tried to talk to her? Could she even control her power? Some parahumans couldn't. Was that why they'd put her in a mental hospital? Before they'd forgotten about her, just like everyone seemed to. Everyone apart from me.

Above me, the lights flickered and died. Not a brownout; a full blackout. This time I already had my eyes half-closed, and was prepared for the flash-and-bang from the bulb overhead – and the sense of motion, of something escaping.

The window shattered, too. The burning Other Place around me grew hotter and hotter – and in the real world, things were getting unpleasantly warm despite the fact it was cool outside.

"Kirsty," I said quickly. "You need to get under control! Or you'll hurt someone!"

Her eyes flickered to me. I could see the guilt in her gaze. I could taste it, the thick oily scent in the Other Place. Guilt – and fear.

I had to know what she was scared of, but if she wouldn't tell me, I couldn't… no. I knew what I could do to find out. I didn't want to, but I knew how I could see her fears.

I exhaled Phobia in a short, smoky cough. She wailed at me, clutching her ragged red robe with claw-like hands, her mask-face locked in a permanent expression of terror. I could feel the first tremblings of panic in my stomach. This wasn't going to work. It was all going to go-

"No," I hissed at her. "Down." Chains lashed out from my barked out words, and I gritted my teeth as I literally forced my fears down. I wasn't going to let her control me. I was going to control her. I couldn't let her win.

I trussed Phobia up in iron chains and left her to squirm on the floor. You work for me, I thought at her. Do what the cherubs do. Do what Sniffer did. Show me how _you_ see. Show me her fear.

Phobia stared at me, lit by the flames around her.

And then-

I fell apart again. My soul spilt out and burned the world. I couldn't hold myself together. I couldn't keep it in because it all wells up and then I pray but the praying has to be done and when I can't pray enough it happens again and everything burns because burning is the only way to stop the knives. Sin must be punished. The wicked are consumed by the light. Except the light is too bright for the world and the angels come and the angels are not men but it's my job to guide them and I'm not strong enough because I'm not whole. I am broken because I'm not strong enough. Heaven's light surrounds me and I am not worthy of it. I can't fail him. Not like my mother failed him, by being possessed by one of the demons. She is lost and I can still see her face and her filed teeth and she has the knife and-

-it hit me until I twisted away from Phobia's gaze. Blinking, I staggered and started to mouth the words of the Lord's Prayer. I… no! Those weren't my thoughts! I shook my head, trying to remember that… my mother hadn't ever held a knife like that and…

Okay. I ignored the smoke and took deep breaths, trying to calm myself. I had to remember that wasn't me. I could still taste her memories, filled with smoke and blood. But I was me. I was sure of it. My identity crisis was pushed aside by a sudden awareness of how hot it had become in here. The skin on my face felt taut. I blinked, trying to wet my stinging eyeballs. Kirsty lost control when she got too scared, I knew that. I'd nearly lost control just from feeling how scared she was. She had to be calmed down, and I didn't know what to say.

"Draw it off!" I snapped at Phobia, choking in the smoke. It felt like my hands were too close to an oven. "Eat the fear!"

Phobia whimpered at me, a soft wet toungeless sound. She clawed at her mask, crying blood. Her chains rattled and clanked. She didn't want to do it.

"Do it!" I demanded, layering on more chains. "Obey!" I whirled on my two barbed wire angels. "Make her do it!" I yelled at them. One angel grabbed Phobia by the wrist, blood oozing where its clawed hands punctured her skin. It squeezed, slowly. The other wrapped both hands around Phobia's neck and dragged her face closer to Kirsty.

The construct screamed out, as her resistance broke. She inhaled, something crackling from behind her rictus. I could feel the air grow thin as she bloated like a tick. Kirsty began to cough and splutter, fire and blood and pain welling up from her mouth like smoke, drawn into Phobia. As they did, the fires around me died down. The walls all around us were black, and flecked with embers. The paintings were smeared with soot, but something about their watery beauty remained. It wasn't the same bliss that the powers of parahumans gave me, but at least it was better than the fire. I wasn't trying to breathe in an oven.

Eventually Phobia collapsed, fat and bloated and only held up by the unyielding hands of my barbed-wire angels. She was whimpering wordlessly, but I ignored that. I was more interested in Kirsty.

The other girl looked at me, and whispered something softly. A tiny wisp of light escaped the broken television set, shaped like a little four-winged fairy – or maybe a tiny angel. And when I checked in reality, I could see it there. It glowed like a nightlight, hanging over us in this dark room. She couldn't hold my gaze for any period of time, flinching away yet invariably coming back with her watery green eyes.

"How?" I asked. I'd never seen one of my constructs in the normal world. They seemed to be creatures of the Other Place.

"I knew you'd c-come back," Kirsty said. My accent makes it clear that I'm a local, but she sounded like she was from the Vermont area and her voice was soft and croaky from lack of use. "H-he told me that I would f-find other people who could see h-heaven. He told me that I'd m-meet other p-people like me, when the grey men t-t-took me here. The world averts its eyes because I b-burn too brightly from where he laid his hands on me. And he gave me eyes that saw heaven's light so that I might witness your angels." She stared me, the sides of her mouth turning up fractionally. There was an expectant look on her eyes.

I blinked. "What… uh, excuse me?" I asked. I wasn't quite sure where this was going. "Who?"

She smiled at me fully, wincing slightly from the pain of the facial movement.

"God."


	33. Lines 3-0x: The Moon

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Lines 3.0x**

**The Moon**

The house was filled with subtle excess. It was a little too large for its occupants. The walls were a little too white, and the surfaces were a little too clean. The golden medals were a little too ostentatious, and the signed pictures of the older inhabitants with various famous figures were a little too prominent. Even the floor was a little too smooth, with humming cleaning robots that were a little too expensive.

And the music coming from an upstairs bedroom was more than a little too loud.

Feet up on the head of her bed, sprawled out on the ComForm mattress, Victoria Dallon held her fingers splayed at arms' length to catch the light. Will Blackmore smouldered at her from the holoframes on her high walls, while his voice blared from her stereo system. She carefully applied a second layer of iridescent nail vanish, watching as the oilslick colours spread out through the solvent.

"What do you think?" she offered them to her friend, sprawled out on a bright blue beanbag, brushing her hair.

"Neat," said Megan, looking over the wire rims of her glasses. Her long strawberry-blonde hair crackled with static as she rhythmically ran the brush through it.

"Neat? Is that all? Did you even look?"

"Uh, yeah. It's just oilslick polish." Megan pulled a face. "Plus, it'd look better if you grew them longer."

Victoria shook her head. "Can't."

"… no?"

"I keep them trimmed 'cause my trainer tells me to."

Megan smirked. "And it's not 'cause you bite them or anything. Sure."

Victoria grumbled, but chose not to continue the argument. "So," she said, elongating the word, "do you have a date for the party?"

"You asked me that… like, an hour ago. The answer is still no. 'Cause I want to focus on my school work and… like, come on. Guys don't get hot until they're twenty."

"I don't think so," Victoria said with a smirk.

"Your boyfriend is a literal superhero. And so are you. That's cheating!" She then grinned, twirling one lock of hair. "Well, I say that he's your boyfriend, but you break up all the time."

"We do not!"

"Vicky. You totally do. You totally, totally do."

Victoria huffed, floating up slightly in the air. "You wouldn't know how it is. You've never got further than kissing someone at a party. Relationships are hard work!"

"Oh, I dunno," Megan said, eyes wicked. "Sure, you're scraping along with a C, but maybe- oof." She managed to dodge the second pillow.

"That was mean," Victoria said, hurt in her voice.

"You got nail polish on them," Megan said, inspecting the pillows.

"… crap. Mum'll kill me if she finds out," Victoria said with a sharp inhalation of breath. "How bad is it?"

"… not great."

"Crap, crap, crap. Give me them. I'll… oh, where's the remover? Where did I leave it?"

The first knock on the door went unheard. The second, however, made it rattle on its hinges.

"What?" Victoria shouted, twisting in the air and leaning her head back so she had an upside view of the door. "I'm doing my nails!"

Her sister yanked the door open. "That is way, way too loud!" Amy groused, leaning on the doorframe with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face. "Seriously, are you going deaf too?" Her brown frizzy hair hung down in front of her face.

The two sisters were like night and day – or, as Amy had once said self-deprecatingly tone, like a swan and a pigeon. Where Victoria was tall, thin and shapely, her sister was mousy. It wasn't just that she didn't stand out from the crowd, but she actively made an effort to not draw attention. Which Vicky felt was pretty weird. Like, sure, she wasn't quite as hot as Victoria was, but if she actually put any effort into her hair or… well, anything, she'd be passable. And her freckles were cute, not 'ugly spots'! Victoria'd even tried to find Amy a boyfriend, but she just refused to work with her there.

Of course, _Amy _didn't get kept back, unable to go help people with her powers. She was a biokinetic, so she got to volunteer at a hospital, healing people with a touch. She could do things that no normal surgeon could – remove tumours, stop bleeding, even help people regrow limbs. Vicky heard so many people thanking Amy every time they picked her up from the hospital. It made her feel… well, jealous. Not to mention useless. Flight, superstrength, toughness – sure, they were pretty sweet to have, but they weren't special. There was power armour out there that could do what she did, more or less. Even her fear aura could be replicated by standard issue fear gas and even _riot cops_ got that. Sure, they couldn't use it to make people like them, but still, compared to her Amy was special.

Of course, Amy didn't see it that way, but Victoria just guessed that was because of the whole 'no self-confidence' thing. Her power had a Red rating, so she couldn't affect herself, but it wasn't like she got sick anyway. Victoria loved her sister dearly and told her as much, especially whenever it looked like she was dwelling on being adopted, but she did have a tendency to whine.

Victoria put the thoughts out of mind. "Look, are you just barging in for no reason or what? What d'you want?"

"Mum wants you. So she shouted at me to go get you because you weren't hearing her shouting at you. _I _was trying to read until she went and yelled at me. Despite how loud you're being."

Victoria groaned. "Urgh," she said, flipping casually onto her feet. "Sorry, Meg. Gotta go deal with Mum issues."

"Look on the bright side," Megan drawled, a smirk on her face. "Maybe the president's been captured and they need one teenage superhero who looks like a model to rescue him."

Victoria stuck her tongue out at that, even though she was seething a bit. "Snitch," she muttered.

"But don't you want everyone to know you're on hand to save the president from terrorists?" Megan continued. "Oh! Maybe you should fly over to the White House to hand in your CV."

Spreading her hands helplessly, Victoria looked to her sister for help, only to see that she was smiling too. "Betrayed by my own sister," she said, with an exaggerated expression of sorrow.

Shaking her head, Victoria floated out of her room. She raised her legs over the banisters before letting herself drift down to ground level, rather than waste time on the stairs. On the way she passed the picture of her father in full costume, shaking hands with President Dole, while her mother beamed out from the front of Time magazine.

There must be something about growing old that meant you forgot important things. Like how you'd helped save the President's life. Or how you were once a big name superhero. Or how you actually used to be kind of cool. But no. Of course not.

No, nowadays you had to just go on and on about stuff which didn't matter at all compared to saving the world. Plus be really thoughtless and cruel to your daughter, and even make her turn down her music despite the fact that you listen to the radio yourself at full blast because you're totally going deaf. Parents! Ha!

Her mother sat downstairs at the kitchen table, a laptop open in front of her. China clinked as she put down her cup of green tea – 'rich in antioxidants!'. Carol Dallon was cut from the same mould as her daughter, although the passage of the years had left her dirty-blonde rather than platinum and marked her face with lines. She wore her scars with pride – most prominently the long burn down her right arm, a gift from the Behemoth – but medical technology had left them little more than superficial marks she had chosen to retain as keepsakes of friends who hadn't made it.

The radio beside her was blaring loudly. Victoria had discussed it with Amy, and the two of them were fairly sure that their mother was going deaf. Maybe she'd picked up hearing damage from all the explosions and firefights across her heroing career. Of course, she insisted that her hearing was perfectly fine and Amy said her ears were fine, so it was probably all in her head.

"-and, you know, it's been a constant refrain from us liberals to talk about the moral compromises and the cost in American lives involved in the occupation of Venezuela – and we all know it's an occupation, for all that there's a puppet government there who 'invited' our 'peacekeepers' in. We talk on and on about damage we're doing to our own nation and how we've shed the moral high ground. But come on! That's just chest-beating! Forget the damage to America and think instead of the damage to Venezuela. We destroyed civil society! In the countryside, paramilitary gangs who work for us against the Communist rebels… those gangs are ruling over vast areas of land – and they're the ones growing most of the drugs! And-"

"Urgh, boring," Victoria complained. "So, yeah. I'm here, Mum. What is it? And can you turn that public radio junk off if you're going to call me down and embarrass me in front of Meg?"

"I'm not changing it," her mother said warningly.

"I know. It's just boring! Do you have to have it so loud?"

"It's not loud."

Victoria rolled her eyes at her mother. "Whatever. Sure."

Her mother did that really annoying thing where she clicked her tongue impatiently. It drove Victoria wild. "I'll listen to the radio at whatever volume I please in my own house, thank you," she said. "And you could do with being a little bit respectful. Whatever you may think, you don't own the place." Carol rose and stared down at her daughter. She was just slightly taller – enough that she could look down her nose at her. "Now. What's this I hear about you going out this evening?"

"Urgh," Victoria began, and then caught herself. "That is, I did tell Dad about it! It's just a party at Alice's! I'm going with Dean and I'll be back by 1am, at the very latest!"

"Telling your father doesn't mean you get away with not telling me. You only do that when you want to slip things past me! And you know he's not well!" Carol crossed her arms. "And I expect you'll want to come back late! We're doing something tomorrow, you know that! Have you even finished your homework?"

"I've done my book report already. There's just a bit more to…"

"So you haven't done it?" Her mother's voice rose in pitch.

"Not all of it, but…"

"Right! That's it! You're certainly not going off to some party and coming back at one in the morning! Victoria, you are fifteen! That is completely unacceptable!"

This was unfair. This was totally unfair in every way you cared to mention. A hint of motion behind her mother provided a possible route of escape. "Dad. Mum's being totally unfair and…"

Mark Dallon looked in his daughter's direction. He was wrapped in his dressing gown, and hadn't got changed from his pyjamas this morning. His retirement had been more… complete than his wife's. Victoria's dad wasn't quite well, although he was in therapy and it seemed to be helping. "Listen to your mother," he said, on the way to the fridge. "I didn't know you hadn't done your homework."

Carol smirked at her. "Nice try, Vicky, but no. So you're not going. In future, you _tell me_ about this sort of thing in advance."

Victoria leaned forwards, and pulled her best pleading face, just letting a little power slip out to make it easier. Not too heavy on the puppy dog eyes... "Come on, Mum," she tried. "I already got some done, and… tell you what. I'll go finish off the math questions now, before I head out. So that's half of what I have to do, right? I can do the rest tomorrow. It'll be easy. I'll just do them in the evening."

There was a slight quaver in her mother's expression. "Well… no. Because you still have to get it done. And it's a party, and you'll be out late and…"

"Mum! Mum. It's not like it'll be a big party or anything. It's at Alice's, remember. Her folks are strict! Also, remember, Dean'll be there. So he'll have his PPD chaperones keeping an eye on things. It's not like they'll let things get out of hand, right?" She played her trump card. "I'm sorry for not telling you. I just forgot, because I'd told Dad and I thought he'd pass it on." She looked up from beneath her eyelashes. "I'll remember in future, 'kay?"

Her mother's face softened, and she sighed. "That's fair enough," she said, more warmth in her voice. "See? You just need to compromise. So, get your math done and show it to me, and as long as you've _actually_ done it, you can go."

The girl smiled. "Yeah, that's good," she said. The trick to handling her mother was to always make sure you had a seemingly fair half-way house up your sleeve. Because of course, she'd actually already finished her math. It was a useful ablative decoy. "Thanks, Mum. You're the best."

"I am," her mother said archly. "Now, you should go ahead and do it soon, because I don't want to have this argument with you again when you try to head out – and don't you dare sneak out! I want to see what you're wearing! No short skirts or anything!"

"But Mum…"

"No buts! And no exposed butts, either!"

Victoria put on a put-upon sigh. Urgh. Mum jokes were literally even worse than Dad jokes. "Sure. I'll report in to you so you can make sure I'm wearing a frumpy sweater and ugly cargo pants. I'll dress like Ames, just to make you happy."

Inside she was smiling. Now nothing was in the way of an evening with her boyfriend. Everything was perfect.

* * *

…

* * *

Everything was awful.

Victoria kicked the door off its hinges and rocketed off into the night. After a minute she found a roof to land on and huddled up into a ball, arms wrapped around her legs. Her forcefield meant that she couldn't feel the chill evening breeze, but the weather was nothing compared to the storm in her heart. Burying her head against her knees, she let out a choked sob. So humiliated! He'd… in front of everyone!

Her phone rang. Through blurry eyes, she checked the caller ID.

Dean.

Well, there was no way she was answering that! No chance in hell! Stupid lying cheating rat who… who…

He'd been kissing another girl!

Well, not kissing-kissing. But their heads had been way too close and and and he'd had his arms around her shoulders! That was not okay! Not okay at all! And they were sitting with each other in a dark corner and… and… it wasn't innocent! No way! This… this wasn't the first time she'd caught him being too close to other girls! And he knew she was coming to the party because she'd texted him and he hadn't even bothered to reply, so he must have wanted her to see it.

… uh. Unless he just hadn't seen it. And it had been dark there, and loud, so people would have to sit close and… maybe they'd just been trying to talk. But then… but maybe…

Victoria wiped her eyes on her sleeve, the sensation slowly dawning on her that she might have made a fool of herself in public. But she'd seen them like that! They'd totally been about to make out! And given she could bench-press a cement mixer, she really, really couldn't let herself slap him – or the bitch. Whoever she'd been. Victoria's parents had hammered that into her ever since she got her powers. If she ever got so angry she wanted to hit people, she had get out of there and calm down. So she'd shouted at him and stormed out. She had to get away before she did something dumb. Dumber.

Concrete splintered as she punched the wall.

She looked down at her phone again. Its case reflected the street lights. Maybe she could… call him back. At least hear what he had to say and whether he had a good reason. But what if he was just lying to her with his excuse? What was she meant to do?

This wasn't how things were meant to go when you and your boyfriend were superheroes. Nothing was quite right. She wasn't allowed to go out and fight crime – or even join the Wards so she could maybe do support intern-y things in preparation for when she finally got to kick criminals in the face – so she wasn't much different from, say, Megan in day to day life.

Sure, she could fly and lift a ton and stop bullets. But the fact that Megan got even better grades than her – and it wasn't like she was stupid, it was just that Meg was a genius – seemed to matter more to people. Which was totally wrong, right? Having powers should _matter _more.

The phone in her hand felt warm. "Panopticon," she whispered to it. "Are you there? Hi? Um… do… you know… oh, forget about it."

There was no response. She wasn't sure how she felt about that, honestly. On one hand, she was sort of glad that the government hadn't seen her boyfriend cheat on her. Or maybe make a fool of herself in public – which totally hadn't happened, but it was a good thing that the woman hadn't seen her do it anyway. But on the other, she… she wanted something cool and superhero-y to do.

Victoria wiped her eyes and smiled a tiny smile. Well. Maybe she didn't need Panopticon for that. She had been making her own little private preparations.

A quick flight and she was at the private gym she belonged to. She swiped her way in and stepped in through the well-lit entrance, letting the double-layered doors close behind her. Inside, it was bright and clean, the light from within streaming out into the evening gloom. Soft music played from unseen speakers and adverts looped on the large, wall-mounted flatscreens.

"Oh, hi Victoria," said the receptionist, who knew her by sight. As well she should — she was a celebrity, after all, and she always made sure that people like this were friendly to her. It wasn't hard to make sure people were on your side. Jane was always good for making sure she got the first reservation for any fitness classes she wanted. "You're in later than usual."

The girl scowled. "Boyfriends are assholes," she muttered.

The older woman laughed, but there wasn't much humour in it. "Tell me about it," she said. "Bad breakup?"

"I saw him kissing someone else at a party!"

"Oh, that is just the worst. One of mine did that and I dumped him so hard." The woman smoothed down her jacket. "It's like, seriously. You know I'm going to be at this party. Use your brain!"

"I know!" Victoria said. "We were meant to be going together, but then I got caught up 'cause my mum made me finish homework before she let me out of the house and… like, first chance! First chance!"

"Terrible. You're better off without him, you know." Jane paused. "Look, I'll go grab two coffees from the staff machine and you can sit down, if you're not feeling great."

Victoria gave her a brave and slightly wobbly smile. "That'd be good," she said, making the older woman smile back.

It really was good to vent, and the coffee wasn't bad by the standards of instant machine coffee. Mind you, the drinks machines here were tinkerfab, not crappy mass market ones. She was feeling better by the time she said a cheery goodbye to Jane and headed in to the locker room.

She sighed. She needed to text her mother. Else she'd go calling her and get frantic when she didn't answer her phone.

"Party sucked dean is so dumped," she swiped. "Gone to the gym to work of some stress very angry at him. Got out before I lost my temper but it was close. Be back late going to go for a fly after I swim and punch some things. Have to calm down. See you. Vic."

She hit send.

Less than a minute later, her phone rang. Victoria checked the caller ID. Amy. Well, _that _was fast. Best guess, her mother had got her sister to call her to try to get the story from her.

Hesitating for a bit as the phone rang in her hands, she answered.

"So, did Mum tell you to ring me?" were her first words.

"Of course not," Amy said.

"And is she in the room with you?" Victoria shot back.

There was an awkward pause. "No, that's ridiculous. I'm just your sister and I want to see that you're okay," Amy said, after long enough of a pause that it probably totally meant that Mum was in the room with her. Or at least had made her call her up.

"Well, okay. Yeah." She propped her cell between her shoulder and her ear as she rummaged through her pockets for her locker key. "Yeah." She sighed. "Yeah."

"… uh, you're just saying 'yeah'."

"Well, yeah. I'll be fine, Ames. Just… I just need to vent a bit, okay, so I'm at the gym. Tell Mum I'll probably be back in a few hours, 'cause I'll go for a flight. I need to think. 'Bout what I'm going to do and… and other stuff. Like… yeah."

"This isn't the first time you've broken up," Amy pointed out quickly. "Maybe this time you should let it stick."

"Yeah, but… I dunno. I'll… when I'm calmer, I… I dunno. I sort of threw a Coke in his face because he was sitting right next to another girl basically hugging her, so… like. I dunno. Maybe if he says sorry." She found her key and after a few tries managed to get it in the right way up. "So, yeah. I'm going to be fine. I just need to be alone for a bit."

"Well, okay," Amy said dubiously. "I'll be going to bed about eleven, so if you're back before then, we can talk."

"Yeah, sure. Like I said, I'm just feeling a bit of a mess. I need to work out. Heh. Work out to help me work things out. Talk to you later, maybe, or tomorrow."

"Sure. See you."

"See you." Victoria hung up, and stared blankly at the lockers. Urgh. God. Stupid Dean. Her eyes refocussed on the contents of her locker, and she smiled. Because here, in the gym, was where she was keeping her little surprise. She couldn't keep it at home. It just wasn't safe. But this place was open 24-7, and no one would be at all suspicious if she came home sweaty. She'd just been to the gym, after all.

She grabbed her _second _kitbag from the locker, and headed into the women's changing room. There was the sound of someone else in the shower, but the place was mostly empty. She'd need to be quick. Victoria looked around, eyes settling on her smartphone. She turned it over, so its camera was face down. Look, if Panopticon could hijack technology using her government codes or something, she didn't want her watching her. It would be embarrassing.

When she was done, she checked herself in the mirror.

Her normal outfit for cape business – ha, more like modelling shoots and PR things rather than anything that mattered! – was pretty and white. She really did look good with the tiara and the cape and the white dress. And man, she'd practiced her landing with the cape over and over again, until she looked totally awesome. She knew how to come in just hard enough to crack the pavement.

But this wasn't her normal outfit. Far from it. She'd been working on this since her first mission under Panopticon. It had to look good, it had to be sneaky, and it had to stop people recognising her. So, first things first, a practical set of black yoga pants, a long belted black t-shirt, and nice heavy black boots that would leave an imprint on criminal ass. Because she was going to kick ass and take names. Yeah.

She sort of wanted a cape, but they had to be fitted carefully and designed so they'd come away if they got caught on something, and she didn't want to choke to death. So rather than that, she'd picked out a black leather jacket. She could float in silently behind someone and slam them with her fear aura. Dressed all in black, they wouldn't see her – but they'd still be terrified. The black woollen balaclava to cover her hair was the penultimate step. There weren't too many platinum blonde flying superheroes around.

But of course, the get-up wasn't complete without a mask. And it had to be a proper one. She had considered a gas mask, because Panopticon looked really pro with that, but she didn't really have to worry about gas getting through her forcefield so… eh. It'd fog up when she was flying. So instead she'd gone to the market stalls in Chinatown and browsed.

Victoria held the mask in her hands. She'd found what she had been looking for. In theory it was a white cat mask. But the mouth was a scary fanged thing, and the way the large eyes were ringed in black made it look more like a skull. A cat skull.

It was so awesome! The bad guys were totally going to freak. Looking at herself in the mirror in her black get-up, she looked nothing like she normally did. Which was the point.

She slipped on the mask and exhaled. A cat-faced monster stared back at her, white skull-like face over black. It was almost freeing. This was the first costume she'd ever picked entirely for herself. Before, she'd always had PR people standing by to correct anything they didn't approve of. This was _hers_. No one else's.

Of course it wasn't that she didn't _like _her main costume. It was awesome. But she didn't get to be awesome in it. It was a costume, not a _uniform_. Something pretty, worn for dress-up. This wasn't a dress-up costume. Well, okay, at the moment it was. At the moment it looked like a Halloween costume.

Now it was time to christen it.

She took the mask and balaclava off, and stuffed them up her t-shirt, heading up to the top floor. The fire escape there was broken, so she could open it again from the outside. Soon she was out and away into the night's sky. With a whoop, she zoomed off, making sure to keep well away from the sound barrier. She got shouted at if she caused a sonic boom over the city.

But no matter what, flying always felt great. It was the same rush she got whenever she pushed herself beyond human limits. Using her power felt _good_. It was like working out – which it was, after all. And so flying felt best of all, because she was pushing herself all the time. Victoria cruised through the sky at a lazy hundred miles an hour. Something was off, she thought, and then laughed. Of course. No cape. Everything was just a little bit smoother, and she didn't have the flapping noise in her ear.

From up here, she could see her house. Nobility Hill looked down on most of the city, built on the slopes as the uplands rose away from the Maine coastline. Down the coast to the south she could see the lights of the power plant in the distance, and out to sea there was the well-lit PPD base. As she watched a helicopter took off, the speck shimmering into invisibility as it engaged its cloaking fields.

She had a few hours before questions would be asked. Time to find some crime and stop it. Under her balaclava and mask, Victoria grinned wildly in anticipation. Dean didn't know she was secretly working for a government agency, and he wouldn't know that she was a vigilante either. It was almost a shame that she couldn't tell him. Just so he could see that she didn't need him!

It took her thirty precious minutes to find something, even when she went looking in Ormswood. It was a poor neighbourhood, but she kept away from the mound of cargo-crate refugee housing that had once been a park. There was a heavy cop presence there. Instead, she lurked around the surrounding area, where it seemed like every street had its own liquor store and a pawn shop offering cash-for-gold. Underdressed women waited on street corners, hanging around the warmth of fast food doorways or heating outports. She wasn't looking for people like them, though. They were victims too. Their clients, on the other hand… yes. Victoria sat down on a roof, and adjusted her mask. There was a cluster of the probably-prostitutes down on the other side of the street, next to a late night supermarket.

She really needed to get her hands on some kind of microphone so she could listen to their conversations, Victoria decided after a while. They might be talking about whoever had made them do this!

Eventually, one of them got a phone call and broke away from the group. Driven more by boredom than suspicion, Victoria bounced from roof to roof as she followed her, tracking her bright red skirt on the street below. It was just a short walk until she got to her destination. A fat man exhaled clouds of smoke and his thick spectacles reflected the glare of the streetlight above. His sleeveless jacket exposed gang tattoos to the night air, sprawled over his arms like kudzu. The woman immediately went to him, digging around in a pocket for cash even before she started talking.

She handed over a bundle of notes. The man counted them out, and nodded, passing her a small package. The woman hastily put it away, and said a few words before turning on her heel.

Victoria's eyes narrowed. Not her pimp. Her drug dealer.

Good enough. Before the man could dial the next number, she leapt into the air. She hadn't practiced this against real people so much, but she'd done it plenty of times against dummies. When doing a drop and snatch, the trick was to overwhelm the target in the original impact, so they wouldn't struggle when you grabbed them. If you dropped them because they were thrashing around, that was your fault. And you had to make sure they didn't bash their heads in that initial collision, because head injuries when falling were one of the fastest ways to accidentally kill someone.

Victoria slammed into the man's back, getting her hand over his forehead to protect it as she barrelled him to the ground. She heard the whoosh of air as the impact winded him, pinning him with her own weight and the force of her flight. Before he got his breath back she wrapped her arms below his shoulders, heaved and vanished off into the sky.

Less than five seconds from impact to airborn, she gloated to herself. Was she good or what?

She touched down on the rooftop, gravel crunching underfoot. The gasping man tried to scream, but it came out as a breathless squeak. Her fear aura hit him like a breaking wave, and he barely struggled as she yanked off his jacket and rummaged through his pockets.

"Drugs," she said disdainfully, tossing the little labelled plastic bags that filled his pockets onto the ground. Bending down, she grabbed his ankles and lifted.

Casually, she moved to the building's edge. Her inverted captive screamed and whimpered, begging and swearing as he swung from her tight grip. He had to weigh twice what she did, but she handled him like a doll.

"Let me go, you fucking bi-"

"Shut up!" she snapped at him. "Do what I say and you'll get out of this!"

"Fuck fuck fuck! Who are you? What are you fucking doing?" He had a noted New York accent, she observed.

"Shut up! Do you want me to drop you? Because I can drop you. I can drop you really easy! All I'd need to do is open my hands and…" she let her arms relax slightly, and he dipped downwards with a scream, "… you'd fall." She let her voice drop. "You want to do that?"

"No! No no no! Please, no!" he begged. Darkness spread down his shirt as he lost control of his bladder. Victoria's nose wrinkled in disgust.

"You sure? You'd have a few seconds of falling, watching the ground get closer and closer and then… splat. You're ketchup all over the road. You wanna be ketchup? I can make you ketchup."

"What do you want? I… I… take my money! Take what you want?"

Victoria laughed. "I don't want money. I want information. Which gang are you with? Who's your supplier?" She bounced him up and down with each question. "And if you lie to me, I'll come back and find you. And do worse things than this! Do you want that? Do you?"

"No! No! I'll… talk! Talk! I want to talk!" He swallowed. He was trembling in her grip. Good. It did him good to be scared. People like this deserved everything they got. "What do you w-w-want to know?"

He sang like a bird. He was a member of the Brooklyn Boyz, confirming her suspicion that he was from NY, a refugee. His gang had their base of operations above a grillhouse nearby in Ormswood, over on 32nd Street right where the old streets met new refugee housing. They got their cocaine from the Merchants, who he thought had contacts down in Venezuela 'cause everyone knew that the Merchants had contacts in the military who handled import but they hadn't joined the Merchants because they didn't want to pay the fees but maybe they'd have to because the Iron Eagles were pushing them and they had some new asshole backer and so on. And so on. In fact, he kept on blabbering long after she'd heard everything she wanted to know.

So she dumped him on the rooftop and went looking for the Raise Your Steak grillhouse. Of course, she took his jacket and his phone, so he couldn't get rid of the evidence. Or warn them she was coming.

From up high, at night, the patterns of light and shade over Brockton Bay were clear. There were the lighter areas – especially around the Boardwalk, where spotlights shone up at the sky and entire roofs glowed – and then there were the darker areas. In Ormswood below her, the neon glow of boards advertising beer outnumbered the intact streetlights on some avenues. Police sirens wailed up into the sky, punctuated by the occasional crackle of gunfire.

She found 32nd Street. The tarmac of the road was a line, splitting old Brockton Bay structures from hastily built structures. The poorly lit cargo crates converted into housing on one side of the street were worn and rusting, the paint peeling from them. She vaguely recalled that they were meant to have been a short term solution, but they were still here five years after New York had been wrecked. She could see the lights and hear the noise of a night market, stalls set up in the narrow streets running between the densely stacked crates.

All along the other side of the street were fast food restaurants and pawn shops. She located her target. The buildings were old narrow redbricks. Peering through the windows she could see that the bottom two storeys were seating, while the third was the kitchen. She drifted between the rooftops, landing softly above her target. The top two floors had to be where the gang did its thing. Gently, she lowered herself down to a window where the blinds were closed, pressing her ear against the glass. There was the muffled sound of male voices, raised in argument over loud music. Gritting her teeth, she focussed on the sounds.

"… fuck this! We can't take this kind of crap from them! They're trying to steal CV Sports from us. Fuck, they _have_ stolen it from us. We keep them safe, but now they're not paying!" A younger man – barely older than Victoria, by her guess. His words almost tripped over themselves as he shouted. Ranty, that was what she was going to call him.

"I fucking know that," said a deeper-voiced man – Big Guy. They both had notable New York accents. "I know they're muscling in on us."

"Well, why the fuck aren't you doing a thing to-"

"Shut the fuck up." And that was a level statement, but Victoria could hear the aggression pent up underneath. "Who the fuck do you think you are, talking back to me like that?"

There was a moment of silence. And then, "Look, I just think we need to show them that they can't mess with us like that, Dad." Oh yes, Ranty had just had all the air let out of them. He was basically whining now. Big Guy was obviously scary – as well as being his father. Well, scary to a normal person. She could probably kick his ass without even breaking a sweat.

"And we're gonna do that. But it ain't that simple."

"You ain't scared of the Iron Eagles?"

"No. 'Course not. But they got more henchies than us. And they got a backer, or they got contacts. They got some new way to get cash and someone who's supplying them with tink. Or they found themselves their own pet Tinker. That's why they think they can fuck with us."

"... wait. How do you know that?"

Big Guy chuckled. "'Cause I got contacts. There's someone I know who came through for me. She says that the Iron Eagles, the Edges and the Flags are all working together now. And they're gonna try to gobble up everyone who controls turf near them. The Eagles are coming south and we're in their way."

"Shit. Is… is it fucking Caesar? The Eagles are working for him too?"

"Yeah. Fucking Caesar. Fuck that guy. He got cash, he got paras and he got plenty of henchies. He wants to be the new Marquis. Someone better seventy-two him. And soon, before he brings the feds in big-time."

"What we gonna do?"

Victoria pressed herself even closer against the glass. This was important.

"I'm talking with the Merchants," Big Guy said. "Since the cops killed Haymaker, they don't have a gang in the area. If we sign on with them proper, we got them to call for help against Caesar's paras, and since we're buying from them anyway… we get a better rate if we swear on."

"… yeah. Yeah. That might work. Yeah." Ranty sounded like he was coming around. "I… I knew you had a plan."

"See, that's why I'm the boss," Big Guy said. "I know this sort of shit. Gotta think about strategy. If we're a Merchant gang, we get their paras on our side. And, sure, they'll be taking a cut, but they sell us our snap, crackle and pop cheaper if we're along. It might even balance out, right?"

Outside, the flying girl frowned. She was pretty sure those were specific drugs. They'd had a talk at school about Snap, the latest dangerous new drug you should Just Say No to. And crackle was a gang name for crack cocaine, so she seriously doubted that pop was carbonated soda. She checked her watch. She probably needed to be home in an hour. Did she have time to take these guys down and still get back to the gym before her mum did something like fly over to see where she was?

She grinned. Yep. She did.

There was a fire escape running up the back of the building, three windows along from the room where the men had been talking. The smell of rotting meat and vegetables wafted up from the bins down below. She gently touched down on the metal gantry, and rested her hands against the door, testing it. Locked. And it opened outwards. She'd need to break the hinges to get it unlocked, and the metal frame felt solid even if it had left streaks of rust bleeding down the painted wood.

So she knocked, rapping on the door sharply. A pause, and she knocked again. There! Footsteps on the other side. She floated back slightly, and waited for the door to swing open. The first sign of movement and she acted.

The slight movement that the man intended turned into a far bigger motion when the door was yanked wide open, pulling him along with it. He fell forwards, sprawling onto the fire escape with a yelp. A pool of light spilled out from the open door, and he looked up to see a dark-clad figure wearing a white Chinese cat mask. Then they were yanking him to his feet, one hand over his mouth so he couldn't even scream. His belt snapped as the stranger tore it off, holster and all, and dropped it on the floor with a clank. Pain flared as they slammed him against the wall, knocking all the breath from his lungs. He could taste blood from where he'd bitten his lip.

They were strong – so strong! Whoever the fuck this para was, they were handling him like a small child even as he flailed at them. Through blurred eyes he saw them do something to the door, and they were over the railing, falling like a brick down four stories. He was still alive, somehow, at the bottom. And then he was hoisted up bodily, and dumped in the waste bin.

He managed to scream then, but the metal muffled his voice. Worse, it meant he got the contents in his mouth.

"Criminal garbage," Victoria told the trash can with a smirk, and then she was up and away. He'd been older than she'd thought, grey around the temples and with prominent lines on his face. She'd used his gun to prop open the fire escape, and she advanced warily through the opening. Hopefully they'd assume that the noise that guy was making down in the trash was just cats scavenging for food, but she had to move.

She poked her head around the corner. Two men, coming out of one of the rooms. Not the one Big Guy and Ranty had been in. Probably used steroids for those muscles, maybe some of those illegal tinkerfab ones. White wifebeaters and too much jewellery. Both armed. And neither of them were young men – they looked as old as her Dad, and even the slimmer one had a notable paunch.

"Man, what's taking Sean so long?"

She could take them.

Her first rush sent her slamming into the fatter one's stomach, leaving him folded in half. She grabbed the other one by his shoulders and thrust at the thin drywall, which shattered around them. She bore him to the ground, flipped him over and tore his gun out of his pocket. With a crack of plastic and metal she crushed it in her hand. Throwing the useless mass away, she broke his hand, and then kicked off, dropping down on the wheezing fat man and knocking all the breath out of his lungs again. She crushed his gun and then shoved him through the wall on the other side of the corridor. This time there'd been a pipe in the way. The cheap metal snapped at a joint, spraying ice cold water across the hallway. Above her, the lighting died.

A door slammed open – the one that Ranty and Big Guy had been in. One of the two African-American men who came rushing out had to be six foot tall, so it looked like she'd found the latter. Big Guy had iron-grey hair and a short beard. He had a gun pointed at her and she threw herself at him. He got one shot off, which went wide – didn't even have to be stopped by her shield – and then she hit his legs. He went down like a sack of potatoes, and from the crack she suspected he'd broken something.

And that just left Ranty. She'd probably underestimated his age from his voice, but he couldn't be more than twenty. He was paler than his father, and in better shape, with sprawling tattoos covering his exposed arms. And from the way he was looking at her, he was terrified out of his mind. Not surprising, really. She was hitting him with her fear aura and he was shaking so much that he'd dropped his gun.

Slowly she stalked up to him, each step deliberate. The broken pipe hissed behind her, sounding like a rainstorm inside. "I could break both your arms," she said, sweetly. She stopped by Big Guy, and rolled him over with her foot. His breath was a rasping pant, and he screamed as his weight shifted onto his right arm. Yes, he'd broken his arm. Well, he _was_ a big guy. Having all that weight land on his arm couldn't have been good.

"You fucking bi-" Big Guy started.

She gave the arm a firm poke with her foot and he didn't finish the sentence. In fact, it looked like he fainted from the pain. Bending down, she took his pistol – it looked like the sort of gun a cowboy would carry – and bent it so the barrel made a U-shape. She made sure Ranty saw every moment of it.

"Do you want that to be your neck?" she asked.

"N-n-no?" he tried. Water from the pipes rolled down his face, merging with his tears.

"Tell me where the drugs are."

"I… I…" his eyes flickered to one of the doors. "I… I'm not telling… and…"

Huh. Braver than she'd thought. She grabbed his hand. "Tell me," she said, beginning to bend one finger backwards.

"They're in that room! That one!"

"Which one?"

"That one! The closet place!" Just like the guy on the rooftop, he'd wet himself. His pupils were so tiny they looked like pinpricks.

Victoria dragged him by the arm to the door he'd nodded at, giving it a solid boot. The solid wood went flying, along with the lock and most of the frame. It was a utility closet. Or it had been, once. Now it was packed with plastic bottles full of pills, and wrapped and labelled packages in brown paper bags, and chemical supplies that looked like they'd come straight from the labs at school. She checked the labels. Some were just weird chemical names, but some of the bottles read 50 SNAP. It must have been the number of pills in each bottle. The whole room smelt chemical.

Glaring, she tore the shelf from the wall and sent the contents tumbling down onto the ground. Grabbing Ranty by the collar, she dragged him past each door in turn, kicking them down as he wheezed and spluttered. She found the room where they made up the stuff on her third try, with extra air conditioning units installed and a fume cupboard.

"Do you have a cell?" she growled at Ranty.

"Y-yes," he wheezed.

She tossed him to the ground. "Here's what you're gonna do," she told him. "Take your cell. Call 911. You're gonna confess to what you're doing here. And I'm gonna watch you. If you lie, I'll break your hand. If you tell them about me, I'll break your hand. Got it?"

He nodded so rapidly it looked like his head was going to fall off.

"And you better stop being a gang member," she told him. "After this. Or else I'll come and find you." She leaned in. "Got it?"

* * *

…

* * *

The flashing lights on the police cruisers painted the street in stark contrast. Circling overhead, Victoria watched in satisfaction.

Pretty good. She'd waited longer than she planned to, but she'd wanted to make sure that the police were on the scene and that none of the criminals had tried to run.

Now? Her work here was done, she thought smugly.

Within ten minutes she was touching down back at the gym. She wrapped her mask inside her balaclava, and with that done she just looked like she'd been working out. Apart from the boots. Crap.

But even that thought couldn't calm down the glee buzzing in the back of her mind. It felt so good to use her powers for a real, _proper_ cause. So great! It felt like the rush from working out, only way, way more intense. She'd stopped a drug dealer and then she's taken down an entire gang and now the cops had shown up and she _knew _that it was all down to her! That it was something no one else could have done! The cops would probably have spent ages trying to do what she'd done all in one night! And they were all going to go to jail and they weren't going to be selling more drugs to people and maybe even those poor women who'd been forced into prostitution by their habits might be able to kick it now that they didn't have their supplier!

She'd made the world a better place by being _totally awesome_.

Getting changed and showering quickly, Victoria checked her cell. Her mother had called her twice. 'Coming back now,' she swiped out in response. 'I feel better. Cell was in locker. Talk to you at home.'

Her stomach churned, dampening but not extinguishing her glee. Her mum was probably just worrying that she'd do something stupid after being dumped. Hah! Nothing to worry about there.

"Bye, Jane," she said to the receptionist. "Thanks a lot for the talk. It… it helped, I think. I owe you. After a workout, I… I think I'm feeling better."

"It's no problem at all," the older woman said lightly, smiling widely back at Victoria. "Just make sure to pass it on to some girl when you're older, eh?"

"I can do that," she said back, grinning. Jane was nice. "Us girls should stick together."

"You got that straight."

Victoria headed straight home, touching down just outside her front door. She took a deep breath. Well, time to face her mother. Hopefully it would just be the mortifying experience of her trying to reassure her daughter after a break-up, and there wouldn't be any mention of any rogue vigilante actions. She massaged her temples. Couldn't look too happy.

She didn't suspect a thing. It went just fine, and after hugs and a hot chocolate with marshmallows, Victoria headed upstairs to run a hot bath.

"I told you so," her sister pointed out. "Don't go getting back together with him just because he says he's sorry."

"Oh, shut up, Ames," Victoria said idly, considering her next course of action. She had to do this again some time.

"I mean it! You sounded like you were a mess on the phone!"

"I'm feeling better now. I had some time to think about it when I was working out. I'm going to see what he says. And does." Because she damn well expected an apology from Dean at the very least.

"Hmmph."

"Do you have something to say, Amy?"

"Oh, no, of course not. How could I ever provide any advice to you? You always know better."

Victoria sighed. Great. Now her sister was being all passive-aggressive at her. Bleargh. There was no way she could get her to help. She was just too straight-laced. Sure, Amy could be useful… but she'd definitely tell Mum that Victoria had gone and taken down an entire gang all on her own. She'd just have to keep Amy out of this bit of her life.

"Well, there's no talking to you when you're like this," Victoria said with a shrug. "Do you need the bathroom to do your teeth or something? 'Cause you should get it done before my bath."

Amy sighed. "Leave the water in when you're done, 'kay? I need a bath too. I've got a headache from the hospital."

Oh. That explained it all. While Victoria had been out being totally awesome and stopping crime, Amy must have been dealing with sick people. Which was totally awesome too, of course. She probably hadn't appreciated Mum calling her up and getting her to check on her sister.

She gave her sister hug. "There, there," she said. "No problem. Just part of being a hero, right?"


	34. Masks 4-01

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Arc 4 – Masks**

**Chapter 4.01**

"God."

It came out flatly, not quite a question. I stared at Kirsty, trying to see if she was really serious. She stared back placidly, her reddened eyes brimming with honesty. The little angelic form above us cast a soft golden glow, quite unlike the pale light of the bulb.

"Yes," Kirsty said. "He used to speak to me when I was a little girl. Then when I got older, he showed me heaven." She kept smiling her watery, wincing smile. "He's God. I love him."

Uh. I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. After a long moment, I decided on "I see".

"Yes," said Kirsty with an earnest nod. "You do. God says he'd chosen you too. He leaves me messages s-sometimes. He tells me things and warns me of bad things that might happen – and how to make good things happen. That's how I knew you were coming back." She leaned forwards, crossing her legs on her bed. Even under the golden light her skin looked waxy and pale, and there was a faint sheen of sweat around her temples. Her fingernails were bitten and there were scars on her fingers and wrists. Not on the insides of her wrists – on the outside. I didn't think they were self-inflicted. "God never lies to me. I'm just not strong enough to do what he wants me to, s-sometimes. B-but I always try to do my best!"

What do you say to someone who starts talking like this? Faith is… well, it was a complicated thing with me, okay? Mum never believed. Dad did, in the sort of not-really-questioned, solidly Catholic way that just sort of takes it for granted. He'd used to take me to church, just me and him, which sort of made it our special time together. Then, after Mum died, we just… stopped. He stayed at home the Sunday after the funeral, and the week after that. He just… drifted away, and we stopped going to church. I think it might've been because that's where her gravestone was. He still goes sometimes on his own, but it's not a regular thing and it used to be like clockwork. I'd never talked to him about it, but I had a certain suspicion that Mum wouldn't have wanted to be buried there.

So I was left with mixed feelings. I think it'd be great if there really was an all-loving God who'd punish wrongdoers and help people. With the Endbringers out there, we need someone on our side. And as soon as he actually does anything to help, I'd be more than willing to start going to church again. But I still prayed back when the bullying started. It didn't help. I guess, if I had to fill out a census sheet, I'm broadly lapsed Catholic. I _want _to believe in God. I'm just not sure if I do.

But even when I was younger, God never spoke to me. He was a distant figure. Church was just something I did with Dad, where we went to a fancy building and listened to people talk and sang songs and heard Bible stories. No-one I knew ever spoke about God with the kind of absolute certainty that Kirsty did.

"Um," I said.

"I saw your cherubs come looking for me," Kirsty said. Her legs were bouncing up and down with nervous tension, and she hugged herself tight. "God told me, a long time ago he told me how to return angels to his light. So I told your angels to return to you without finding me. And yesterday he…" she reached under her pillow, and pulled out a torn out scrap of paper. "Look!" she said, with sudden confidence, catching my eye.

I looked. It was a torn out advert from one of the papers this place had delivered.

**STARTING TOMORROW  
TAILORING FOR YOU, AT AFFORDABLE PRICES  
AT HERBERT'S HOUSE OF FABRIC  
DON'T DELAY!**

"It's h-how God told me you were coming," she said. "It was written that you would return. And you did."

Uh. Um. It was… a newspaper advert. You can't just say 'it was written' about adverts. And sure, it talked about 'tailoring', but… look, my surname isn't 'Herbert' no matter what a succession of new teachers might think. I checked the paper in the Other Place. It was scorched and burned and the spelling was warped, but there was no secret message saying 'Bi tHE whey TAYlor is COMiNG baK' or however the Other Place would put it. It was just a perfectly normal 'PLeas BUy oUr CLothEs wE NeeD muney.' That was the sort of thing it did to adverts.

"So. Do you see things?" I asked. "Things that… aren't there?"

"No," Kirsty said placidly. "I see the things that are really there. That only those God has blessed can see. Like me. And you." She clasped her hands in front of her, almost in prayer. "You can see heaven, too. Can't you?"

"Heaven? You… you mean the Other Place?"

Kirsty nodded. "You open your eyes again and then you see the perfect world God has made," she said. She wasn't stammering, now, and her watery eyes weren't focussed on me. She was staring right through me, at something else, a thousand yards away. "A world where there are no lies. It is Heaven. We once had Eden but now it is lost. Now only those who God has chosen are the Elect. We know Eden."

I was left speechless. The Other Place wasn't heaven. Far from it. It was true that there weren't any lies there, but it seemed to take a silent delight in cutting people open and showing off all their dirty little secrets. Kirsty clearly wasn't mentally well - but more importantly, I thought, the damp Other Place had been scarred with burns when she'd got involved. Were we even seeing the same place?

"What does heaven look like to you?" I asked her, as gently as I could manage. I didn't want to scare her. I wasn't sure I had it in me to force her to calm down again. If I slipped, I'd be letting Phobia loose, bloated and fattened on all her frantic, trapped fear.

She gave me a sunny smile, the scars on her face wrinkling. "Heaven is filled with grace." She hugged one knee up to her chest, resting her chin on it. "Love is brighter than the sun. It's all around. The smoke whispers to me – tells me things. I tried to tell people how the world b-burns with God's love, but no one believes me. They say I'm crazy. I've stopped trying t-to tell them I'm not." There was an odd look in her eyes. "It hurts when they don't believe m-me."

I leant back against the wall, folding my arms. It was different. I had a lot to think about. Still, I didn't think she was quite sane. Sure, I thought I was going crazy when I started to find my powers, but she thought God talked to her. I tried not to frown as I thought about the strange writing in the Other Place. If I was religious, maybe I'd have thought that was God talking to me, too. Or worse, the Devil. She certainly lived in a world surrounded by fire and smoke.

So, for the sake of her tattered sanity, she'd decided that it was God talking to her and that fire was holy fire. I supposed it was better than thinking that she was in Hell. Though… why hadn't I seen all of this the last time I was here? Was it just because I was still getting used to my powers? The Other Place seemed to have layers, each hiding different things until you peeled them back like mouldy wallpaper. How much more was still lurking beneath the surface of what I could see? It wasn't a comforting question..

"So," I said, "the S-I-X thing? You were… you got very scared, when I brought it up before. Is it linked to…" I tried to phrase it in her terms, so I wouldn't set her off, "… to the Devil?"

Kirsty swallowed. "They're v-very bad people," she said softly, eyes flicking away from me. "They d-didn't start off bad, but demons got into their heads and they pl-played off all their bad bits." She looked back at me, then away. "One bad day, and they listened to the Devil and now they say his words. They've gone to hell, where everything is cold and black and dark."

"Isn't… like, hell meant to be hot?" I said. I couldn't stop myself.

Fortunately she didn't take it badly. "That's what they told me in church when I was little, but God told me that they were wrong," Kirsty said, nodding along. "God says Hell is _n-nothing_. It is outside his l-love. 'When in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was untamed and shapeless'. That is Hell – existence without God. Or perhaps non-existence. I don't think you can really exist unless God loves you." She smiled. "I wish I was as good as God. He even l-loves very bad people. I'm… I'm too wicked to love bad people. I just want them to die. Bad people like the… the S-I-X people. They take God's earth and make it into a slaughterhouse. They w-want to fill the oceans with blood." She swallowed. "I w-won't let them."

"And you're saying God told you that… that demons took over these S-I-X people and now they're… in hell?" I asked. That wasn't what I'd been looking to hear.

Once again, she seemed to give this serious thought. "Well, n-no," she said, brow wrinkling. "God didn't tell me that." An unusual, steely glint entered her eyes. "But no one who is still good and c-can be saved would do what they do. Only people who listen to the devil would do that s-sort of thing."

Okay, this was dangerous territory. Fear of S-I-X, whoever they were, had left her basically non-functional, and she was only this coherent because I'd drawn off her mindless terror… but even like this, in her mind she felt able to speak on behalf of God. Phobia twitched in the corner, and I decided to steer the conversation well away.

"Do you know that your records are… weird?" I tried. "Like, what this place knows about you? They don't know everything they should." I tried to think like she did. "Does God hide you?"

"Yes." She swallowed. "He makes sure that no one asks questions about why I am here. S-so the angels keep me safe and stop me from being left with no place to stay. I am not as strong as Mary and I don't think there's a stable for me. There aren't any horses, anymore, so there aren't stables."

Um. Right. "So… you're the reason that all the paper is faded? Did you send an angel to do it?"

"No, no." There was a momentary flash of irritation on her face. It was the first time I'd seen her show that emotion. "_God_ is the one who does it. Not me. He makes provision for me, because I trust in him." And like that, the anger was gone and she was smiling again. "I think you could do it too, if you grew sick of the sins of the world. You could come live here with me."

I tried very hard to keep my expression the same. On the scale of people I'd never want to live with less, the crazy religious girl who'd tucked herself away in a mental asylum was still ranked only _slightly _lower than crashing on Sophia's couch. "How old are you?" I asked her.

Kirsty blinked. "I am twenty nine," she said, sounding confused. "Why?"

"What." It was so unexpected that I completely lost my chain of thought. She looked… well, she looked younger than me, actually. Sure, I look old for my age, but I wouldn't have pinned her as more than sixteen or seventeen. That she was nearly thirty…

"I d-don't look it. But I have been here since I was s-seventeen. I have lived in this place for a l-long time."

I rubbed my temples. Okay. Right. "So… you don't age."

"I do age," she contradicted me. "But the angels remember me as I was when they first met me. When God's light descends on me, I become as I was then." Her shoulders slumped. "I have looked like I am f-fourteen for a very long time. It is God's will, but…" her voice softened, "I have often wished that he had chosen otherwise. The s-sin of Eve is h-heavy on me."

"Uh huh."

"I don't want to be like Methuselah, but the angels say I must be like this. I don't understand why. But he says that this must be s-so and so I will not question him."

Okay. This girl? She really didn't want to take any credit for _anything_ her powers did. It was getting on my nerves more than a little bit. I bet she hadn't even tried pushing the limits of what she could ask her angels to do. If she ever really asked them to do anything. I rubbed my hands together and glanced out at the greying sky, trying to work out where I could safely go from here.

"God wouldn't have sent you to me if you s-served the faithless men who rule America," Kirsty assured me out of the blue.

"Uh…" I paused, trying to translate that from what I knew of her world-view. "Do… you mean the PPD? Because I haven't told them, no."

She nodded. "They do not obey God's laws. They serve only themselves."

Well, yeah. We've got the whole 'Division of Church and State' thing for a reason, right? And then a thought occurred to me. "Wait. Do you mean the grey men? The ones who… they were investigating the S-I… that place I told you about. They covered everything in black letters, and… and they had black oil on their hands?"

"You've met them too," Kirsty said sadly. "The grey men have no souls. They're just clay, like Adam was before God gave him a soul. The owls lead them."

"There's more than one owl lady?" I asked, shocked. I hadn't even mentioned it to her.

"I didn't see an owl lady. But there were two men who had souls and listened to the birds. The grey men did what they said. They put me in the first hospital, but they didn't forget about me. Not until the hospital forgot about me and gave my room to another girl. I tried going home but there wasn't a home for me anymore, and even our church was gone. The grey men had knocked it d-down and built a new one, and no one there remembered me at all."

I cleared my throat, and tried desperately to think of something else to say, but I was coming up blanks.

"That was my time in the w-wilderness," she continued, reciting as if she was reading from a book. "The angels kept me warm and showed me where to go, and hid me from the eyes of those who looked for me. I hid and watched and waited until God told me that I had suffered enough and sent me to this place. He told me that someone would come in time. You are that person." There was desperation in her eyes. I couldn't say no.

"I suppose I am. It's… it's a shock," I said weakly. "I thought I was going crazy when I started to see the Other Place."

Kirsty smiled at me. "God knew that you'd be thought mad," she said, softly. "H-he was kind to send you to me. Thank you for b-being here. I… I had doubted him." She seemed pained by the admission, and stared resolutely at her bedcovers as the stammer returned full-force. "I've been here for s-such a long time. H-his grace hides me from others, but it is l-l-lonely when no one r-remembers you properly. And when they remember you, they t-tell you that you're n-not right in the head." She glanced back up, ashamed of something. "Sometimes, when times are bad, I… I have thought they might be right. That's when the angels escape, and things burn when they're not meant to. Only f-faith keeps them under control. I m-m-must honour God, or he'll take them away from me."

"Oh?" I asked. "Um. I find that… um, I can't let the emotions my angels represent take over." They weren't all strictly angels, but I thought it'd be safer to stick with own Kirsty's lexicon. I didn't have any real problem with the angels or the cherubs, either. They were very dependable. It was the emotion-things which were a struggle.

She reached out with sudden speed, clasping my hands in her own. Her skin was baby-soft despite the scars, I noticed in surprise, and her grip was surprisingly strong. I wasn't sure if I could worm out from it easily. She might have looked soft and flabby, but there must have been surprising amounts of muscle under there. "But now you're here. Just like God promised," Kirsty said earnestly.

"That's good, right?" I asked.

"Yes. I h-haven't had any friends in years," she said. "Since I was little. And even b-before Mother sold her soul, she didn't want me playing with the other children. I only got to play with them after church."

She wasn't an easy girl to talk to, even now I had a sort of translation going. The thing about speaking with Kirsty, I was finding, was that it was like picking at a scab. You knew you weren't going to like what you found when you broke the surface, but it was still hard to resist digging deeper.

"When you say 'sold her soul'?" I began, really really not wanting to go down this path.

Kirsty wrapped her arms around her legs and gave me another one of the watery, wincing smiles that twisted the scars on her face. It didn't reach her eyes, though. "She hurt me. A lot," she said. "Because the demons ate her from the inside out. She said it was my fault that she had to do this, but that was a lie. She said God had told her to do it, b-b-but God told me she was lying and that he loved me even if she didn't and and and h-he'd never spoken to her. He showed me Heaven. And then the angels made things right again."

"They… they did, huh?" Images came to mind of how _my _angels would 'make things right'.

"Yes," she said, unblinking. And now her smile reached her eyes. "They did. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen."

I had a lot to think about on the car ride back with Sam. A lot to think about, and a lot to try my very best to _avoid_ thinking about. Once I'd left Kirsty behind, I'd just sat there as the other two talked, trying my best to look interested. I don't think my best was very good.

The afternoon sun was behind us as we headed back to the city, moving out of the forests and back into the urban sprawl. The neon-lit bulk of out-of-town shopping malls and abandoned warehouses converted into hoovervilles formed an invisible gateway to the Bay. The chauffeur had the radio on loud, blaring some shock-jockey.

"-of course the establishment told you it was a 'humanitarian' thing. That they 'needed' it. That it was the 'right thing to do'. Right thing for them, more like! All the time they sat back and rubbed their fingers together, knowing that they were getting cheap labour. Do you know how many Japs have come swarming into America? Ten million! These so-called 'refugees' are taking advantage of us – encouraged, I might add, by the UN and the liberal sell-outs in Big Business and Washin-"

"Oh, turn that crap off," Sam said wearily to the chauffeur. She shook her head at me. "Honestly," she said, voice lowered. "I find it horrid that people are saying that sort of thing. They're just preying on the stupid."

"Mmm hmm." I was still thinking about Kirsty.

"They want people to be angry at the immigrants while they keep making money from the hate they generate. It makes me literally sick."

Sam was talking like there was no way I could disagree with her on this. It came as a bit of a surprise, because her parents were rich and she went around with tinkerfab gadgets. I wouldn't have pinned her mother as a liberal. Of course, maybe Sam took up the cause to annoy her, but I got the feeling she really did believe in it. I took a peek into the Other Place, but I couldn't tell for sure.

Me, I was sort of in two minds about it all. Because, yeah, the kind of DJ who talked like this wasn't someone I'd want to sit down and talk to, and… well, Japan _had _been devastated. They needed somewhere to live. And, yeah, Dad's dad had come over from France, so I really had no place to frown at immigrants. Nor did anyone who wasn't pure Native American, really.

On the other hand, walking through bits of Little Tokyo was scary even when I was with Dad. Everyone knew about how the Boumei were one of the most dangerous gangs in town, even before you took their parahumans into account. They'd been fighting with the White Lion Association, and it was normal at this point to hear news of people getting caught in the crossfire. A few months back, there had been headless bodies found dumped in a locked cargo container down by the Docks. And their leader could turn into a dragon. Kind of a big deal.

It wasn't like I just heard about this on the radio, it affected me in my day-to-day life! There were Japanese gangs at school, after all. There were bathrooms you didn't dare to go in if you weren't one of them, because that's where the Japanese girls hung out and smoked. Most of them didn't have great English, so they just talked among themselves and glared at anyone who came near. Sure, there were some in my classes who didn't seem so bad, but before Christmas there'd been some stabbings outside the school gates and everyone knew it had been some Japanese boys who did it, even if they didn't know exactly who.

It was like… sure, we had a duty to look after refugees. But didn't they have some kind of responsibility to not form gangs?

"Anyway," Sam continued, "most of the things they say are just lies, anyway. Like the stuff about Japanese immigrants taking jobs." But they did take jobs. Dad told me as much, that companies which didn't like unions were using migrants for minimum wage labour. "It's pretty funny that they claim they're both welfare parasites and takin' our dang jobs," she said, affecting a mocking accent. "But then again consistency has never been a virtue held by _those _sorts of people."

"It's complicated," I said. There was no way I wanted to get into an argument with her. Not now. Not today. And not when she said 'those sorts' in such a… a contemptuous way. I wasn't quite sure what she meant by that, but I knew I didn't want her to group me with them. "I'm sure they have a reason to be scared."

"Oh, sure," she countered, sarcasm heavy in her voice. "Mum says that a lot of the refugees she's taken on are really over-qualified for what they were doing before – if they could even find jobs – and it's really helped her expand. So, _really _they're literally helping the economy. And it's the right thing to do to take in migrants, anyway. Where are they going to go otherwise?"

"Yeah. You're right," I said, to end the argument. Well. It was certainly helping _her _mother's bit of the economy, I thought darkly.

There was an awkward silence.

"Um," Sam said, running her hands through her hair. It was annoying how good she managed to make her short puckish haircut look, I thought. She wasn't quite as pretty as Emma, but it was closer than it had any right to be when she had bags under her eyes and looked tired. "So. Uh. Do you want to go and get something to eat?" She massaged the back of her neck. "Look, I'm sorry about how that turned out, y'know, I spent most of the time talking with Leah and… uh… sorry about going all political on you. I just miss her already and I'm worried and… sorry. Sorry."

"I came along because I wanted to," I told her, and considered what to say next. I didn't want to hurt her feelings. I hadn't enjoyed this, any part of it, but I needed to have an excuse to see Kirsty more. She wasn't right in the head, but she was a parahuman, with powers like mine. I could do things to people's heads, so maybe I could help her? I could try and make sure she wouldn't lose control when she got scared.

After all, there was no way she'd go to the PPD. She was too scared of the people who'd put her in the psychiatric hospital in the first place – and then forgotten about her. Just like everyone seemed to, apart from me. She scared me, but… I knew how awful it was to be lonely. And even if her powers seemed stronger in some ways, I actually used mine. I could be stronger than her.

"I wouldn't want to do this too often, but I don't mind coming along occasionally," I conceded. "At least on weekends I don't have too much homework," I added ruefully, trying to get a smile out of Sam. "Sorry, but that comes first."

I managed to get a laugh. "Yeah." The laugh turned into a sigh as her watch bleeped. "Sorry," she said, pulling a capsule out of a jacket pocket and popping out a pill. She winced as she swallowed it. "I just wish they tasted better."

"You seem better," I said cautiously.

"I feel better," she said. "Are you on anything?"

I shook my head. "Occasional sedatives to help me sleep, nothing more. They said it was basically a psychotic episode or something caused by… by what happened." She knew in general terms what'd happened, but I didn't like talking about it with others. 'Got locked in a locker filled with used tampons, had psychotic break' was bad enough to explain.

"Oh. Yeah, well, you wouldn't believe how much of a difference this stuff makes," she said. "Mum got me into a pre-market run for it, and it's way better than the lithium was. It doesn't have any of the side effects. Well, apart sometimes waking up feeling sick, but that's _nothing_."

"Morning sickness?" I asked wryly.

She sniggered. "Don't call it that. People'll misunderstand." Her expression turned sour again as we passed the big yellow arches of a McDonalds. "But… it's just not fair. They put me on drugs and I have therapy and the yoga and tai chi and… I am actually feeling much better. Like, they work. I haven't felt like I used to at all. Even when I was feeling horrid, on the lithium, it wasn't the same, like, kind of bad." She wrapped her bomber jacket around herself. "There's nothing like that for Leah. No easy cure. And… and she… she just looks so thin! She was worrying about Christmas and then…" Sam stared at me, eyes haunted. "Sorry, I shouldn't be… it's just…"

"It's nothing," I said. I wasn't quite sure how to react. She sort of looked like she wanted a hug, but I didn't think that was appropriate. Anyway we were belted in. I settled for patting her hand in a vaguely ineffectual manner. "There, there."

She shot a stare at me. "You're really not very good with… like, touchy stuff, are you?" she asked bluntly. "Like, literally, that was a Dad-level of reassurance."

I spluttered. "Well, I don't… I wasn't sure if I knew you well enough and… um…"

"Look, Taylor," Sam said. "We spent… like, two weeks together in a psych hospital. We know each other plenty well enough for that." She nudged me. "Remember the group bonding sessions? If they weren't working, then they were just a stupid waste of time, eh?"

It was a pretty awkward one-armed hug. I'm not really sure how reassuring it was. Also, I wasn't certain of her logic. "They were a stupid waste of time," I grumbled.

"I didn't think they were."

"They were."

Any further argument was interrupted by her stomach growling. "Oops. Look, I know a pretty good place on the edge of Little Tokyo that does just fabulous noodles and stuff like that," Sam said. "Come on. I bet you're hungry too." She glanced at me. "I'll pay. It's the least I can do when today can't have been much fun for you."

I was hungry. "I'll need to tell my Dad I'll be back later," I began.

She pulled out her ultra-sleek flatphone and swiped along the screen. "Your home number, right?" she asked, passing it to me. It was already dialling.

Dad, of course, was totally fine with me going out to have dinner with a girl my own age. He just told me to tell him if we wanted to go catch a movie afterwards or something. It sounded a lot like a suggestion to me.

Sam had her chauffeur drive us to the south side of Little Tokyo. That was the safe bit. It had the most restaurants, which meant it had the most tourists and visitors, which meant it had the most police. There were new buildings standing alongside the early twentieth century redbricks, and the neon shop-signs were bilingual.

We were dropped off on the corner next to the restaurant. Looking inside, I could see long tables running the entire length of the room. They were old stained oak and looked out of place surrounded by the Japanese décor – maybe they'd come with the place. It was early, so the place was half empty. Good. I didn't want to be crammed up next to other people.

"Two," Sam said perfunctorily to the woman at the entrance.

We were shown to one of the benches. Looking out the window, I could see the sea through a gap between two former warehouses. One was now a nightclub, while the other looked like it'd been converted to shops on the ground floor, with housing above. I did my customary sweep in the Other Place. No murder-oil anywhere, though there were strange vines growing over the nightclub. They were fleshy, and veiny, and I wasn't sure what they meant, though I guessed they looked a bit like… oh I flushed and hastily shed the Other Place. Never mind that.

"This place is good, and the service is super-fast. It's sort of like fast food, except it isn't greasy or anything. Oh, and the green tea here is free – and it's actually good tea. They do it with loose leaves in these cute little cups," Sam advised. "Have you had this sort of stuff before?"

I looked down the list. Not much was familiar. "Not really," I said. "We tend to have more Chinese at home when Dad doesn't feel like cooking."

"'Kay, sure. Okay… well, how are you with hot stuff?"

"As in spicy?"

"Yeah, like chilli-hot."

"Not great," I admitted. "I mean, sure, like a mild Mexican thing is okay, but even then I'm not much of a fan."

"Hmm. Well, okay, maybe you'd like the miso ramen soup? It's sort of spicy, but not too spicy – well, unless you put on more chilli oil. Which I do, 'cause I like my miso hot. Otherwise, you can't go wrong with a beef or chicken ramen."

I looked that the prices. The chicken was cheaper than the beef. "Chicken sounds good," I said.

"Okay, that for you, and then… hmm, maybe a side of Edamame to share."

"What's that?" I said flatly.

"Oh, they're just green beans all covered in salt. They're great. I think they're soy beans. Or maybe broad beans."

I didn't believe her. Salty beans didn't sound nice. "Okay," I said.

"And… hmm, I think I'll have the seafood ramen, actually. And then two green teas and… they do pretty good fruit juices here? Like, made here."

"I think I'll just have a tap water," I said quickly. I was either going to have to pay for this, or Sam would volunteer. Even if she was paying, I didn't want to feel bad about taking advantage of her.

I sighed, resting my head in my hands. Look at me.

An hour ago I was dealing with a crazy girl who talked to God, commanded angels and saw a burning Heaven – and who had powers sort of like mine. Now I was almost being a normal teenage girl, going to have a meal with a sort-of friend and worrying about my allowance… and it was almost as nerve-wracking.

Fuck it. I might as well take advantage of better moments like this. It wasn't like I couldn't afford a drink, when it came down to it. I'd just have a cherub bring me twenty bucks and insist she take some money to cover it. Maybe I'd even be lavish and have a dessert.

"Actually, you know what," I said, pouring over the menu. "I think I _will_ have something nice. Do they do… uh, elderflower?"

"Yeah," Sam said, flipping through the menu.

"So elderflower, then."

"Okay, well…" Sam's watch chimed. "Oh, sorry," she said, reaching for a pocket and pulling out an injector.

I looked away as she casually placed it against her wrist, and heard the faint grunt of pain. I looked back as she put it away. "I thought you had pills," I said. "Something else?"

She blinked. "Oh, no, that's not for the bipolar disorder," she said slightly wearily. "That's a separate health thing. I've been on one kind of medication or another since I was a baby," she started ticking off her fingers. "They had to give me a new heart when I was one. New liver when I was five. That got rejected when I was ten so I had to get another liver. I had problems with fits until they found a para doctor who managed to stick little electrodes in my brain which stopped the epilepsy. My body's a piece of patched-together crap." Her shoulders slumped in a sort of shrug. "Winding up bipolar on top of everything else is just another thing, you know?"

"So… uh, you're basically held together with pills?" I asked. Hmm. So the Other Place had been trying to tell me the drugs were doing more than just stabilising her mood. Score another one for it, I guess.

"Hah! Yeah, pretty much. Drugs and surgery, although I haven't had an organ transplant in five years and Mum's making me go to the clinic more to make sure that the new drugs I'm on aren't causing any more damage." She tucked her injector away, running her hands through her dark hair. "I really hate my body sometimes," she said darkly. "Why couldn't I have had another? My parents really screwed up making me."

I shook my head. I had some inkling of how much those kinds of medical treatments must cost, and they only reaffirmed my knowledge that her family was incredibly rich. Cloned organs, experimental drugs and parahuman surgeons curing epilepsy wasn't the sort of thing you got if you were a normal person, unless you volunteered for clinical trials. "I didn't know," I said. "I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, don't patronise me," Sam said, a strange tension in her voice. In the Other Place, there were flames flickering over her patches of burned skin. I could feel the heat suddenly radiating off her. "I didn't tell you before, so what've you got to feel sorry about? I don't tell people exactly because I don't want people making a fuss!"

"It's just…"

"I know, I know. Yeah, yeah. Just being nice." Her Other Self leant in, its shrivelled shrunken eyes glaring. Anger-flames flickered over it in a banked fire. "It just gets on my nerves, the way people go every time I tell someone. It's like… I just wanted you to know so you'd know why I'm constantly taking meds. That's all. I'm lucky to be alive! I get it already! I've had people telling me this as long as I can remember! At least _you _didn't tell me to my face that I'd be dead if my parents were poor." She sighed, looking around the restaurant guiltily. "Sorry. Sore spot. Not your fault. Just don't get all patronising and treat me like I'm made of glass. I get enough of that from… never mind."

"Okay, I get it," I said. "Not made of glass. Got it. So. Um. How do we order here?"

Of course I knew she wasn't made of glass. The Other Place would have told me if she was.


	35. Masks 4-02

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 4.02**

The meal went fairly well. I enjoyed it, actually. Sam had a tendency to let her mouth run away with her, but she was funny and easy to listen to so long as you kept away from certain topics. I found myself relaxing around her. After all, it wasn't like there was anything forcing her to spend time with me. We weren't at school. She didn't know any of the trio. The only reason she could have for hanging out with me was that… she wanted to.

And heaven knows I needed someone easy to talk to after spending time with Kirsty. I bet if you asked her, she would say that heaven _did _know.

I swirled my chopsticks around in my nearly empty bowl, and shifted into the Other Place. I kept away from my powers when I was eating. The salty beans had been surprisingly good, and the chicken noodle soup thing was nice, so I didn't want to see things that would kill my appetite. Now, though, it was time to check something. "So, I spoke to Kirsty at the hospital."

Sam looked at me blankly, and blinked. "Sorry, the name doesn't ring a bell."

"She was just one of the girls," I said. "I think I mentioned her to you a few times."

"Did you?"

Yes, I definitely had, but I couldn't see any hint of powers flickering over Sam. However Kirsty was getting people to forget her, she wasn't actively doing it when someone tried to think of her. "Well, maybe not. If you don't know her, it probably doesn't matter."

"Yeah, no problem." She looked over at one of the bilingual boards on the wall. "Do you want dessert?" she asked.

The place was full up, and so was I. "Not really?" I said.

"Good. Me neither. So… um. I guess I'll call for a pick up? Unless you want to do anything else?"

"I don't want to get in your way." I paused, looking for some way to make that sound less awkward. "Plus, I've got homework."

"Oh good, so I'm not the only one," she said quickly. "Where do you want to be dropped off?

I shook my head. "I'll walk," I said.

"You live nearby?"

"Not _too _far, but I was going to head over to the Boardwalk. Or maybe Printers Square? There's something I need."

She frowned at me. "That's not a safe walk on your own," she said. "And it's pretty far."

"I'll be fine," I said, confidently. "I walk that kind of distance all the time. It's cheaper than the bus and I like walking, especially when I'm feeling full."

"Are you sure?"

"Don't worry, I know how to keep myself safe. No-one's going to bother me." After all, I'd be wrapped up in Isolation. "I know where I shouldn't go." Which was why I'd be able to head over there and take a look around. I wasn't lying, even if I wasn't being honest.

I saw her off, and then stuck my hands in my pocket and started walking, entering the cold of the Other Place like a sudden fogbank.

Two cherubs fetched me my notebook and my rucksack. A moment later, a third grabbed a hoodie. It wouldn't help against the unnatural chill of the Other Place, but there was a serious breeze coming from the north. Appropriately armed, I set off towards Printers Square. It was cheaper than the Boardwalk, even if it was a bit further.

I cut into the heart of Little Tokyo, walking parallel to the train track which ran on the north-south route. Once you got past the redbricks, most of the neighbourhood was poorly maintained concrete structures. They probably dated back to the '50s. I'd have stood out like a shot if I hadn't been in Isolation. Not only was I the only white person around, I was taller than almost anyone else on the street. I couldn't even read most of the signs in the shops, and most of the street signs had laminated cards stuck below them written in Japanese.

Back when it was called something else, the entire district had been occupied by remnants of the paper industry that used to feed Printers Square. It was why the two neighbourhoods were next to each other, Dad said. As a result, there hadn't been many people here when the first lot of Japanese migrants arrived, and some of the factories had sold up for housing. It hadn't been so bad back then, and not all of the refugees had been poor. Then New York had been hit by the Leviathan. NY'd had the third largest Japanese refugee population in the country and they'd been scattered up and down the East Coast. Little Tokyo had quadrupled in size in weeks.

The sun was blood-red and dim in the Other Place, casting long shadows down the narrow streets. Its light was cool on my face, and I wrapped my hoody around me tighter. The clouds overhead were dark and low, groping at the roofs of the tightly-packed buildings. There weren't many cars on the streets here, and the ones I saw were old and banged-up even in the real world. Instead, the locals seemed to have a thing for bikes and mopeds.

The rot and decay was even worse here than in most of Brockton Bay. A step into the Other Place showed the apartments around me as hollow husks, with windows and doors that didn't exist on the real buildings. They oozed dark water that stank like a blocked sink, or the piles of garbage that clogged up the docks with the tides. If I squinted, the extra openings looked like faces, locked in expressions of misery and fear all over the gutted structures.

I shuddered. The refugees had brought their fears of the Leviathan with them, all the way into the Other Place. A woman was leaning against the wall to my right, smoking. In the real world she was professional-looking, in her thirties, wearing a fawn-coloured coat and a high-necked scarf in the cold wind. My visions left her waterlogged and bloated, with slimy tatters in place of clothes. She was scarred and torn up, grey flesh covered by the bite-marks of little creatures. There was a numbing, stale smell drifting off her, which I was coming to associate with depression or apathy. It couldn't quite mask the salty water – brine or tears? Similar traumas covered half the adults on this street.

I pinched my brow, banishing the Other Place as I tried to clear my head. The smell was just too much. I couldn't face the misery here. I'd bet a lot of the residents didn't want to be here any more than I did. There were men drinking in the dingy bars that seemed to litter every street. There were a lot of fast food restaurants and street-side food sellers too, I noticed. And laundrettes. Did the Japanese just eat out more than Americans, or was it that the over-cramped housing didn't have basic amenities?

Sometimes I really hated the Other Place. More than usual, I meant. It was bad enough when it showed me the hidden, nasty sides of things I already knew, but I'd never walk through Little Tokyo on my own without it. If it weren't for my Isolation, I wouldn't see all these things, and I wouldn't need to ask all these questions. Like… how could you have a home without a microwave or a cooker? Before this was Little Tokyo, the houses for the factory workers would've had kitchens. I mean, they'd had to, right?

So had they just stripped them out to fit more bedrooms in? I could see the rooftop shacks built on the top of apartments, the gutted concrete factory buildings with curtains in the windows and the housing crates crammed into alleyways, parking lots and old basketball courts. This was probably where a lot of the Japanese kids from school lived. Winslow was massively over capacity – one of many reasons it was so crappy – with students bussed in from all over the city. Dad said that there had been plans to build more schools, but they'd been bogged down in planning and funding concerns. Even if they managed to do anything with them, it'd be way too late for me to benefit.

A train rushed past, the screeching tracks sounding more like squealing pigs in the Other Place. I wondered how the Endbringer evacuation plans covered all these people.. I'd bet money they just didn't. It wasn't a happy thought.

The guttural, mechanical roar of motorbikes broke me from my reverie. The lead rider was a hulking brute with a pig-like face, flames of unrestrained anger flickering around him. I could taste flashes of fear from across the street at the sight. It wasn't outright panic or anything like that, but quite a few people were nervous to see this gang roll around.

Shedding the Other Place, I stepped back in brief confusion. Their faces still weren't human – it only took a moment to realize their motorbike helmets were sculpted like demonic faces. Everyone knew about the Boumei and their bikers. Their illegal street races filled the late-night news, and the aftermath of their drive-by shootings made the morning slot. None of that was happening right now – I was more interested in the beautiful glow coming from one of their backpacks. Something that gorgeous had to be tinkertech. Just the sight of it helped wash away some of the relentless grimness of Little Tokyo's Other Place reflection.

Taking something like that out of criminal hands was exactly the sort of thing a hero could do, I decided with glee. Who knew what it was or what harm it could do in their hands? I wondered if the Boumei had a Tinker on-side. I'd need to take a look into that. Having an example of their work could even help me track them down!

I exhaled sharply. "Cherub," I whispered to the little porcelain-doll construct. "Bring me the tinkertech."

There was a faint pop, and I tasted blood in my mouth. That didn't matter, though, because suddenly there was warmth and grace clutched tight in my hands, bliss setting my blood alight. It felt so good. I'd never been this close to tinkertech. It was wonderful.

I can't tell you how long I just stood there, letting the cool blue flames seep through my gloves and into my skin. It just felt so good. Only my fear of the bikers brought me out of my daze, somewhat. They were long gone by the time I so much as looked up, but they might come back with some parahuman that could find me and take away my beautiful fire.

It was hard, but I forced myself to look away from the soft, shimmering beauty in front of me, returning to normalcy. My vision was blurred, for some reason. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve, and focused properly on what I'd confiscated.

It was definitely a weapon, even if it was folded up. Tilting my head, I poked at it. It looked like it'd unfold into some kind of machine gun. Or… no, it was a folded up crossbow, made out of black plastic and metal. My fingers felt numb and pleasantly warm when I brushed against the arrow. I guessed that was the part that glowed so brightly. It was painted red, with a broad tubular head, sort of like a firework.

So… some kind of crossbow rocket, I was willing to bet. God only knew what it'd do if I actually fired it. Something told me it'd do more than just explode up in the sky while people went "aaah".

"Argh", maybe.

I stuffed it in my backpack. I could admire it after I got out of Little Tokyo.

Fortunately, I made it to Printers Square before whoever actually owned the weapon in my bag came looking for it. It was a relief to be back in a place which actually felt like America, and a double-relief to be in Printers Square. It was almost home territory for me.

My nerves were still buzzing from that little peek at the tinkertech. I felt alive, like all my stress had just drained away. Even Kirsty's weirdness didn't worry me too much right now. I wondered if seeing parahuman powers cheered her up like it did me. I hoped so. That girl needed some happy-feeling in her life.

In fact…

That thought led me to make a purchase at a bookstore. And hey, maybe that kindness meant I was being rewarded or something, because I got _really_ lucky looking for replacements for my destroyed costume. Just past a hiking store that provided me with a replacement balaclava and gas mask, I found a clothing store with windows covered in big red and black **EVERYTHING MUST GO** stickers. I took a look inside, and while the air smelt musty and kind of damp, and the off-white ceiling tiles were cracked and broken, there were rummage bins everywhere, filled with clothes. I dug in.

Within a few minutes, I'd found a few black t-shirts, and some men's trousers that were a perfect fit for a beanpole like me. I couldn't find another black coat, but there was one in dark grey which could probably do the same job. I made sure to quickly check everything in the Other Place, but they were just neglected and a little mouldering, like the shop itself. Simms' had seen better days.

I sighed as I checked the fit of a man's jacket against my reflection in the shop's mirror. More slim-fit men's clothing. A too-thin, too-tall body with no curves meant that all the remaining women's clothing was either too wide around the chest or too short in the torso – and none of them fit my arms. It wasn't even like men's clothing was a perfect solution, since my shoulders were too narrow. It was just the least bad choice. Barely. If I had hair as short as Sam, I'd look like a total lesbian wearing this sort of thing. Instead, I looked more like… well, uh, someone dressing in rummage-bin hand-offs.

What a coincidence.

This outfit wasn't going to look as good as my first one. Then again, I'd learned one lesson the hard way: if someone could see me, I'd messed up.

I smoothed the jacket down as a thought occurred. Isolation didn't make me invisible, just made people ignore me. Most of the time that was better, since it meant people stepped around me rather than walk straight into the invisible girl, but it wasn't perfect – the woman with feather-hair had shown me that. Anyone who could ignore powers like mine could see me perfectly.

But what would that bird-lady have done if I'd walked in wearing a police outfit? I wouldn't have stood out, even if she saw me. It wouldn't be too hard to fast-swap costumes, not with my cherubs, and it wasn't like Panopticon was getting any credit for these tip-offs anyway.

I held onto that thought. It seemed worth building on.

I paid, stepped into a changing room, and sent my bagged-up clothing to my hideout. I didn't leave yet, though – there was just one more thing I wanted to try. The store mannequins were stacked up like toy soldiers against the back wall, stripped of their clothing. Someone had taken the time to stick black masking tape over the chests of the female dummies, presumably in case someone was overcome with lust at the sight of a white faceless doll with an exposed place-where-nipples-would-be-if-they-were-more-anatomically-detailed-than-a-Barbie-doll.

On second thought, some of the boys in my year probably _would _start checking them out.

The store was probably just going to throw them into a skip, but I _wanted _them. I could use them down in my hideout. I could actually hang my clothes up properly, rather than leaving them folded up on dusty tables. Besides, I didn't know if I actually _could_, but the idea of animating hordes of lurching store dolls to attack anyone who tried to break in was pretty attractive. It certainly seemed creepy enough for my power.

It was really just for the clothing.

"Hi," I said, approaching the teenager behind the counter. "I'm an art student at the college. Are you doing anything with those mannequins you're throwing out? 'Cause I'll give you twenty bucks if I can take some of them for a project."

The gangly boy looked confused. "Uh. What do you mean?"

"I want to use them for an art project," I repeated. "Because I'm a student. Like I just said."

"I'll need to talk to my manager," he said, voice cracking.

Drat. I sunk into the Other Place and focussed on preparing an Idea. "Okay, sure," I said. "I'll come with you."

I walked away from that meeting twenty dollars poorer, but with permission to take anything I wanted from the junk pile they were dumping behind the shop. They obviously thought I'd be limited by what I could carry. It was hard, but I managed to hide my grin. As soon as their backs were turned, I got to work, and only stopped when the ache in my hands and head started to become uncomfortable.

The sun was creeping down the sky by the time I finished. I found a payphone and called Dad, letting him know that I needed some exercise so I was going to walk back. He seemed in a good mood, because he didn't ask me any hard questions and just told me to take care.

So I went to find the alleyway I'd chosen, just off Printers Square. I'd marked the wall so I could find it again, white chalk in a door shape. I'd added my Panopticon marking above the door, although I'd had to stand on tiptoes. Sinking into the Other Place, I could see a black seam running down the flaky brickwork, a scar on the world that marked where I'd made the tunnel. It seemed to run directly down from my icon.

"Angel," I said, even as I exhaled the figure of barbed wire. It stared at me, its gas-mask face totally without expression. "Open the hallway to the mirror room."

It stepped forward, metal feet clicking on the ground, and then with a sound like nails on a blackboard it opened a slit in the world. I braced myself against the cold as the angel unravelled, and then pushed forward through the dark hallway. The Other Place was all around me, rot creeping into my nostrils, wetness oozing underfoot, nails snagging against my clothes.

The moment I emerged, I sank down to my knees and gasped for breath, tasting blood. Ow. I'd pushed myself too hard with the mannequins earlier, and hadn't left enough for the angel. I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, and ran my tongue over newly-cracked lips. Ow. Ow.

Eventually I managed to pull myself to my feet, and lurched through the hall of mirrors, leaning on the dusty walls as I made my way to the cafeteria. Thankfully I'd thought to keep some drinks down here, to help me wash away the taste of blood. There was a warm throbbing in my left hand, and I already knew what it was going to be. I'd brushed against the walls of the tunnel.

"Crap," I muttered as I pulled off a glove. Blood was oozing out from under my nails. It wasn't bleeding heavily, but the hand was going to be sore and tender for the next few days. I let myself sink down onto some of the cushions I'd left down here, and then achingly had to stand again to fetch the Band-Aids and the disinfectant.

Still, I was pleased that I'd managed to pick up the mannequins, even if I was suffering because of them. Once I'd seen to my wounds, I hung my new clothes up on one of the dummies. It looked pretty good in the dim glowstick-lit light, if I did say so myself. Sort of a bit sinister, but in a good way.

Well, that's what I wanted to think, anyway. I sighed. On me, it'd probably just look like a scarecrow wearing a gas mask. At least it wouldn't get creased now it was hung up on a mannequin. You probably got no respect in the superhero community if you had a crumpled costume.

What would you call a superhero whose power was to keep clothes neat? The Launderer? The Hanger? Mangler? Those all sounded like villain names. I shook my head and went back to my bags. I really wanted to take another peek at the tinkertech, but I focussed with gritted teeth. It wasn't going anywhere, so I could look tomorrow. I had to get home before Dad started asking questions, and I couldn't do that if I spent all my time staring at beautiful rocket-crossbows. I stashed the high tech bundle in another room, safely out of sight.

I'd bought Kirsty one of those coffee-table books, full of full-colour pictures of animals. She'd mentioned that she missed her pet rabbit, and it seemed like it would give her something nice to look at. Nicer than the inside of the psych clinic, at least. I pulled it out of its bag. Beneath the green-grey light of underground glowsticks, it didn't look quite as good as it had in the shop.

I sunk into the Other Place. The title twisted to read

**u sTILl eaT thEM dont yoU  
itS ok 1:26**

Yes, thank you, Other Place.

Incidentally, you spelt 'you' in two different ways in the same sentence. Are you just doing it to annoy me?

Again, I put such thoughts out of my mind and called a cherub and Watcher Doll. It needed something extra, this time, so I breathed out a squirming cloud of unformed something into my hand, and forced it onto Watcher Doll's. I felt the stinging of my oozing fingers seep into it, the pain shifting and feeling older. Like I'd been hurt a few days ago. I wasn't sure what that meant in the long run, but I imagined the construct changing and shifting. When I pulled my hand away, it had a speaker-like mouth as a vacant O under its single staring eye.

"Cherub," I told the other one firmly. "Take this book when I tell you. Watcher Doll, go find Kirsty. Kirsty Williams." I knew where she'd be. She'd be in her room.

The twisted Watcher Doll nodded once, and vanished. One of the old dead CRTs mounted on the bare wall crackled to life, casting flickering white light over the room and filling the air with whispers. The image fuzzed, then resolved itself as Kirsty sitting in her room, staring at walls still covered in her childish drawings.

She looked straight at Watcher Doll. "Um. Hello, Taylor? Y-you've sent me an angel. Do… do you want to talk?" Her face brightened up into that horribly awkward scarred smile. I felt like a bit of a fraud.

"I won't be long," I said. "But I got a present for you."

"For me?"

"For you."

She blinked. "No one ever g-gets me presents. They got me a present on my b-birthday in the first hospital, but then they forgot I existed. Th-thank you, Taylor." She paused, and seemed to panic slightly. "It is not my birthday, though."

"Cherub," I said to the hollow-eyed china doll. "Take it to her." The thing vanished from my eyes and re-appeared on Watcher Doll's view, placing the book on her lap. That was weird. The camera was showing the real world, but I could see the doll-cherub.

Kirsty picked it up, holding it up in front of her face. "Thank y-you," she said softly. "It's… beautiful." She opened it almost reverently, and began to trace her fingers over the pages. She was crying, I realised. I hadn't expected that. "I h-have something for you, too."

"There's no need for that," I said. "I mean, I just got you this because I thought you'd like something with… you know. Pictures of animals."

"It is beautiful. Thank you. B-but that is why I have to tell you something. God gave me a message for you."

"Um," I said, for want of anything better to say.

"H-he revealed himself to me. They still give me pills, when they remember, and sometimes God shows himself to me when I take them."

Okay. It seemed that Kirsty was being sort of… uh. Is it possible to describe someone who sees visions of God when they're pumped with drugs in a psychiatric hospital without sounding insensitive? "Go on," I said.

"He d-didn't say anything. He was a bright sun in the sky, hidden behind thin clouds, and beneath the sun was a pyramid and it was made of gold and it shone in the light. And every bit of the pyramid was made of smaller pyramids and when I touched it I heard a thousand people singing hymns together. It was beautiful," Kirsty said, smiling. "That's h-how I knew this was for you. He w-wants you to bring people together and watch over them. He doesn't tell me to do that."

"I see," I said. Admittedly, bringing people together and keeping them safe didn't sound like a _bad _thing to do. "Uh. What does God tell you to do?"

"God says I must find others who see Heaven and I must save the w-world by casting out false gods," she said. Her chin fell. "I… I don't know if I can, though. I d-don't think I'm strong enough."

I swallowed. "Why not just look at the animals and think of… of how beautiful the world is?" I had no idea how I was meant to handle her or help her. She was just so obviously lonely. She'd gone even further than I had, before the locker – she was so lonely that she didn't even realise that she was missing other people. Of course she talked to God. It was the only person she could talk to. No one else even remembered her. "And I'll try to keep talking to you whenever I can. You can… you can tell me things that God says. Or we can just talk, right?"

"Will you come visit me?" she asked. She didn't seem to realize she was rubbing the scars on her face. Whatever her power did to keep her young, it couldn't heal those things.

"I said I would, so I will," I said. "I haven't forgotten you, right?"

"Yes. You haven't," she said, a little more firmly. "The only p-people who didn't forget me before were the ones who led the grey men, the owl and the raven and the others. And you're not one of them. You're a s-servant of God." She paused. "I don't think the grey men forgot me either, but they have no souls. They're not people. They just look like them."

"Mmm," I agreed, more or less. "So, I'm going to have to go because I need to get home, but I'll try to talk to you again. Every few days at least?" I made a promise to myself that I'd try. The look on her face when she looked at that book was the happiest I'd ever seen her, except when she talked about God. Coffee-table books of full-colour photography had to be happier to think and talk about than the God she talked to in her head – and who talked back.

"I will wait for your angels, Taylor," she said. "And I shall pray for you."

"Thank you," I said, for want of anything better to say. "Goodbye for now. Watcher Doll, come back."

The construct returned, and the image on the powerless, dead TV screen flickered and died. I stared at the wall for a while. Kirsty's head was a strange place. A strange and sad place.

Was she talking to a real god there? Did God really have a plan for me?

Enough of that. I didn't want to creep myself out. I wrapped my arms around myself, looking around the green-lit gloom of my hidden underground base. I was still hurting from overusing my power, and the pains I'd get from opening a hallway in the mirror room weren't something I was looking forward to. But I really did need to get back home.

Well. Maybe I'd take just a little look at the tinkertech. A pick-me-up, you know?

I took the crossbow-weapon, and then separated the rocket arrow from the rest of it. Setting it down on a table in front of me, I sunk into the Other Place and let the warmth wash over me. It was so good.

But there was something moving inside the light. Something that wore the fire, something which created it.

I leaned in, lips parted. I could taste blood and I didn't care.

And before my eyes, the bright beautiful colour twisted, cracked open, inverting itself. It felt good. Incredibly good. Stars flashed before my eyes and I sagged down.

Blinking, I rubbed the tears away and sat up. I didn't know how much time had passed, but... the beautiful thing on the table was gone. The arrow was still there, still wrapped in fire, but it was rotten and it was darker and it just wasn't the _same_. It didn't help me feel happy anymore! I couldn't see whatever had been moving within the fire, either.

"No no no," I begged. I wasn't sure what I was talking to. The Other Place, or perhaps the tinkertech itself. "You're meant to be beautiful. Make it go back!"

There was no change. Of course not. All I had was the fading buzz of whatever I'd done to it, whatever had drawn all the life and fire and colour from it, polluting it with my nightmare world. The muted remains of the fire fit in with the rest of the rotting world, more like a cloud of gas than a real flame. Something cloying and seeping and horrible.

No. No. Please. No.

I slumped, jamming my hands into my pockets and wincing at the sudden flare of pain. Even the light of parahuman powers wasn't immune to the Other Place. All I had to do was look too closely, for too long, and it got corrupted. Not even something that beautiful could resist the rot and decay, not forever. Nothing wonderful could last.

And it had felt _good _to do it. I'd nearly blacked out from the rush. I'd made the world uglier, and I felt good when I did it.

I was just going to go back home, now, right now, and not think about this at all. Not about this, not about Kirsty, not anything about my powers at all. For at least a week. If not more.

I'd said it before, but now I meant it. Fuck the Other Place. Fuck my powers. Fuck _everything_.


	36. Masks 4-03

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 4.03**

That week I first met Kirsty was a nightmare, but once it was over… nothing happened. For _months_.

Eventually I worked up the nerve to start looking into the Other Place again. Sure, I'd found a few more murderers for Glory Girl to capture, but it didn't _feel _like I was doing much. I just needed a name and a bit of information to send a cherub to hunt them down. Usually it didn't take much more than watching the morning news. Sometimes I went to scout out the area ahead of Victoria's capture, but I didn't even really need to leave the house.

I'd wanted to do more. Maybe I could have tried taking down an entire gang, like Victoria had delightedly told me she'd done, but there hadn't been the time. There had been project deadlines and essay hand-in dates and teachers lecturing us about how we needed to step up our game, and so on. Even Winslow, crappy school though it was, had to _look_ like it was trying to help us, and that meant more homework for everyone.

At least these days I could get things done without the worry of my bag getting soaked in juice or having my pencil case stolen, but I still couldn't find the time to do anything _big_. I'd tried to find the S-I-X people and the government's grey men, but there wasn't a trace of either of them. I'd tried sending a cherub to look for the bird-lady. After days of walking the streets and peering into dark and rotting corners, it had seemed like a good idea. In retrospect, of course, I was very, very glad that the cherub hadn't found her. What if she'd somehow traced it back to me? I'd rather be bored than caught.

Then, at the start of May, someone died at school.

By this point I was back to the daily grind of normal life. And it lived up to the name, but I was coping. I had a whole set of tricks to avoid trouble, foremost of which was staying in Isolation, and being moved out of the trio's classes meant they couldn't go for me casually.

Considering Emma and Sophia mostly didn't bother, it was strange that I'd still catch Madison lurking around near my classrooms every once in a while. She was proving really persistent for someone who'd always seemed like they were just along for the ride. Of course, a lot of the time she turned out to be waiting for one friend or another who happened to be in one of my classes. I kept an eye on them, just in case she was setting something up. Nothing had happened yet, though. I was beginning to half-suspect I might simply be paranoid. Maybe she really had forgotten about me?

Of course, that was sloppy. I knew they could bide their time, hold back until I let down my guard. They'd done it before.

Still, all things considered I was having an easier time at school than I had in years. In fact, if it hadn't been for Cry Baby, I'd have been asleep at my desk. Mr Singh was having us read a poem about two people in a dump truck and two beautiful people in a Mercedes and how the beautiful people were meant to be unreachable and unreal compared to the smelly garbage men. Or something. My attention was sort of split. I was spying on another sweatshop through the eyes of my cherubs. I was planning to take it down with Glory Girl next weekend.

"And… Luci. You can read the final verse."

Next to me, Luci stood up and cleared her through. "Um," she began, scanning the photocopy that until a few seconds ago she'd been doodling on. "The last bit?"

"Yes. As I said, the final verse."

"And the very red light for an instant  
holding all four close together  
as if anything at all were possible  
between them  
across that small gulf  
in the high seas  
of this democracy," she read, and sat back down.

"Now, what do you think this means?" he asked the class. No one raised their hand. "Don't all go at once," he added. His eyes drifted to me. "How about you, Taylor? You've been staring off into space all lesson. What do you think about this verse?"

I dropped out of the Other Place guiltily, trying to look like I had been paying attention all along.

"Um. Well, the red light and… uh, you know, the way it talks about an 'instant' means that the author is saying that… well." I could hear sirens outside, on the street outside the school. They sounded like they were getting closer, and it really wasn't helping my concentration.

"They spent the rest of the poem talking about how different the two scavengers and the two beautiful people are, so while they're close to each other for a little bit, that's because of the red light and they're really not very close together at all," I tried. "That is, uh… when the stoplight changes, the garbage men will be off picking up more trash and the beautiful people will be off to some fancy restaurant and just because they're next to one another doesn't mean they're living in the same world. If you know what I mean."

"That's one common reading of it," Mr Singh said. "But of course, it goes deeper than that. Alex, what do you think he's talking about in the later bits of that verse?"

One of the boys stood up. He was wearing a tank top, and his ginger hair was cut to a fuzz. "Like, it rhymes because he's rhyming 'seas' and 'democracy'," he said.

"Yes, that's certainly true. The rest of the poem is written in blank verse, but for the final two lines he goes for a rhyme. But what deeper point do you think he's trying to reinforce?"

"Is it something about how rich people play golf and poor people don't? Like, they play golf by the sea."

I rolled my eyes and started to return to my cherubs.

"Golf?" Mr Singh frowned. "No, he's talking about a 'gulf' here. A gulf is a bit of the ocean partly surrounded by land. Like the Gulf of Mexico."

"Oh."

"Though you're right, yes. One of the things it is touching on is how rich people and poor people live completely different lives. So yes, I guess you could say that the way that rich people play golf is part of that. If you had two scavengers in the poem, all 'grungy from their route'… I bet you wouldn't see many golf courses letting them in to play. Unless they had garbage that needed picking up."

That produced a dutiful laugh from the class. I abandoned the cherubs and glanced outside as the sirens got uncomfortably close. The ambulance had actually arrived at our school, driving through the open gates. Mrs. Knott was outside wearing a high visibility jacket, waving it in. Other people were looking too, and Mr Singh had noticed he'd lost his class's attention.

"Everyone, please, eyes front. Now, one of the big themes of this poem is the divide in—"

I wasn't paying attention anymore. Sinking back into the damp chill of the Other Place, I exhaled Watcher Doll and sent it after the ambulance. And then someone jabbed me in the ribs. I twisted around, and found myself glaring at Luci's monstrous form. She jerked her head towards the front of the room, and I forced myself to surface in reality.

"When I tell people to pay attention, that means you too, Taylor," Mr Singh said, glaring at me.

I blushed. There were only ten minutes left before lunch. Despite myself, I managed to pay attention.

"So," Luci said, as I gathered up my books. "wanna see what's going on down there?"

"Hmm?" I packed my bag, hands shaking, and resisted the urge to sink into Isolation. It felt too much like I was on the spot. She was talking to me without prompting, about things that weren't school-related. I'd been ready for lunch a few seconds ago, but now I felt queasy. I knew perfectly well that she just wanted to see what was going on with the ambulance, but there was still part of me wondering what her game was.

God. I was a fucking mess, if something like this made me panic. "Sure," I croaked out, trying to sound normal.

"Good. Let's go quickly, before everyone else blocks it off." She grabbed my hand and half-pulled me out of the classroom. I hoped she didn't notice me flinch, or how fast I was breathing.

Madison caught my gaze as Luci pulled me towards the stairs. She was waiting for me! She had to be. I walked quicker, until I overtook Luci and she stopped dragging me. I imagined Phobia, and thought of driving iron nails into her fear-locked mask. "Where did it sound like it was coming from?" I asked her, already feeling better.

"Over towards the bike lot, right?"

"Yeah, that sounded about right," I said, looking behind me. I didn't think Madison was following me, but I couldn't be sure.

We weren't the first ones there. There was already a small crowd present, gathered around a cordoned-off area. A teacher was trying to make everyone stop staring and go away, but his waving didn't seem to do much. No-one could look away. People outside the school were staring in. A young woman in a white hoody was practically pressed up against the chain mesh fence, snapping away with her instant camera. A little girl in a white dress was standing a little further away, eyes wide as she stared at the ambulance. Her mother was trying to pull her away, but she was tugging against her, one hand tightly clutching her red balloon

Even animals seemed to be watching. Doves had gathered on the overlooking buildings, and cooed from their perches above me. They probably saw a crowd and thought "food".

Of course people were going to stare. Anyone with a nose could smell the thick, coppery scent in the air. There wasn't the slightest wind, so the smell lingered and piled up, drowning out the fumes and smoke of the city. I was much too familiar with that smell. It hit my nostrils every time I entered the Other Place.

I straightened up and peered over the bobbing heads. The shabby old paving stones were splattered with rust, even out past the edge of the cordon. There was so much of it. It reached up the walls. And when I sunk into coldness and gloom, the Other Place showed me the black oil of death. It was fresh, and strong.

Someone was dead.

"What happened here?" Luci said, standing on her tiptoes as she tried to peek over the top of the crowd. That wasn't something I had to worry about. "What can you see?"

"There's…" I swallowed, tasting the stink. "There's a lot of blood on the ground. I… I think someone's dead."

"Oh." Next to me, Luci slumped down. "Well, that sucks. Can you see who it was? And how do you know they're dead? Is there a body?"

"I can't see a body," I said. "I guess they must be in the ambulance."

"Well, how do you know they're dead then?"

"Uh. Well, there's a lot of blood…" I said uneasily.

"That doesn't mean they're dead," Luci said, bouncing up and down on her toes as she tried to see over the mass of people. "How much blood is there?"

I swallowed. "Lots. It's… uh. On the walls as well."

"People can bleed lots when they get stabbed and not die. 'specially if they're in an ambulance."

"Oh?"

Luci looked at me. "Saw it on TV. Like, uh, on one of those hospital shows."

"Oh yeah," I said. I might have been able to believe her if I hadn't seen the death out there. Besides, there was too much blood.

The teacher who was trying to shift the crowd seemed to be losing his temper. He'd started to move from waving to shouting. "Wanna make a retreat and get lunch?" Luci asked. She had a wry expression on her face. "There'll probably be less of a wait in the canteen if everyone is here."

She was right. Wasn't that awful? I'd expected to not be hungry, knowing that someone had died out there, but my appetite was back in force. Had the Other Place worn me down so much that even death didn't shock me? The person in that ambulance might be someone I knew!

It probably wasn't, though. It wasn't like I knew many people to begin with, and given the timing, everyone was meant to be in classes. Hell, I didn't know for sure that it was a student. Maybe it had just been on school grounds.

"Luci!" A short, pale girl came over and sat down opposite to us. She was wearing nearly as much make-up as I was. I didn't know her, but I thought she was covering up acne, rather than scars. "Did you hear? Someone's dead."

"They're actually dead? Like, I saw the ambulance, but…"

"I heard from Riana that she saw a body near the bike lot. And they were putting it in a body bag, and, like, they'd been stabbed! And there was blood everywhere!"

"There was a lot of blood," I said softly.

The girl directed a stare at me, her thick brows furrowing. "Who's she?" she asked Luci.

"Faith, Taylor. Taylor, Faith. She sits next to me in English."

"Oh, sure. But yeah, and you know what else I heard?" Faith said, leaning in. She was practically murmuring under the noise of the cafeteria and the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead, and I had to lean in too to hear her. "They're saying the dead guy is Justin Wells."

Luci sniffed. "Oh. So it was probably some stupid thing," she said in a low voice. "Not surprised."

"Who?" I asked.

"Uh… like, big-big guy from the year above," Faith said, gesturing with her hands to indicate both height and width. "Skinhead, smells funny, wheezes—"

"He's an asshole," Luci said, bitterly.

"You know him?" I asked.

"Got stuck on the same bus as him," she said, eyes narrowed.

"I wonder who did it," Faith said. "I mean," she looked around as if she could notice a killer just by their appearance, "if it was someone here…"

I looked around too, but in the Other Place. There was no deathscented oil on any of the people I could see. "I don't think it was anyone here," I told Faith's cracked china-doll face.

"You can't tell by looking," Luci said. She paused, many eyes blinking. "Well, unless they're still covered in blood. It was probably a gang thing if it was Justin. One of the Japanese gangs. Or someone from one of the Ormswood crews."

"Oh?" I said, returning to normalcy and getting back to my lunch. Eating in the Other Place wasn't a good idea, unless you wanted to lose weight. "You think?"

"Yeah," Luci said, pushing back her wire-rim glasses. "That or he stole some skinhead jackoff's girlfriend and got his ugly face stabbed for it." She checked her watch. "Shit, got to get to the library to get my stupid homework done. I bet everyone's going to be talking. So annoying."

I nodded a farewell. They'd certainly given me a lot to think about. I needed to—

"So, hi," Faith said. Her can of Coke hissed as she opened it. "Didn't know Luci knew you. Haven't seen you around."

I jolted out of my thoughts, surprised that she was still there. More surprised at the fact that she was _talking_ to me. What was I supposed to say? "I wound up moving classes a while back", I tried, after an awkward moment. "I ended up in hers. Mr Singh doesn't let people sit where they want, and he put me next to her."

"Oh, you got him? I had him last year. He's a dick."

I quite liked him. "Yeah," I said.

She sipped from her drink. "So, when you said you moved class recently… where did you go to school before?"

I blinked. Had she really never seen me before? Most people remember a girl who's taller than most of the boys. I vaguely recognised her, although we'd never been in any of the same classes. I'd thought everyone would have heard of me, by this point. After all, I was the girl who'd been shut in a locker full of used tampons. I'd probably been the butt of the joke for every week I was away. "No, I went here all along. I had to move classes because of," I considered how to phrase it, "issues."

"Oh." She seemed about to say something else, but then the school's announcer system let off a two-tone note.

"This is Principal Blackwell," said the principal. I wondered how she was dealing with it. Badly, probably. She really was useless. "I am sorry to announce that there has been a serious incident over near the north entrance, and a student has been killed. The police have asked me to inform you that the north entrance will remain closed off for the rest of the day, as will the bike lot. Students whose bikes are currently in the lot should gather in the reception area at the end of the day if they require transport.

"The police ask that you do not speculate on the identity of the unfortunate victim until their identity is formally released. Please go to your classes at the start of the next period normally, where a list of names will be gathered. Over the course of the next few days, the police will be making enquiries, so please help them in any way you can. There will be further announcements if the situation changes. The school councillor is ready and waiting to help you if you need someone to talk to because of these tragic events."

Well, there it was. Actual confirmation that someone had died. The Other Place had been telling the truth, no surprise there. I wasn't shocked, but from the sudden explosion of babble I was in a minority. No one had actually died at school in years. I mean, I'd made a pretty good try at it, but I'd sort of botched the dismount and landed in hospital.

Until now, they'd managed to restrain the pupil-on-pupil violence. There'd been beatings, broken limbs, a few stabbings, sustained and extended unprovoked bullying campaigns… but no deaths. Although it couldn't have been fun to be that one kid who had to be hospitalised because someone stuffed a fire extinguisher nozzle in his mouth and filled his stomach with foam. That's what I heard, at least. I didn't know any names, so maybe it was only a rumour. Or some idiot wondering how it tasted.

"Looks like the rumours were on track," Faith said quietly. "Huh. Wonder if that means they were right about it being Justin, too."

"Maybe," I said. "I mean, there was a lot of blood. It'd be pretty easy to guess that someone died, but I don't know how you'd know who it was." From the noise filling the canteen, everyone else was also ignoring the request not to speculate. Well, I was going to do more than that. I was going to catch a killer before class started again, so that meant I needed to ditch this girl.

I pretended to focus on my food, and sunk into the Other Place. It suddenly became much harder to focus on my food. I rushed through my breathing exercise, exhaling a cloud of blackness that squirmed into a crawling Idea. The little pale centipede-creature crawled up Faith's sleeve and into her ear. I could see it still wriggling behind her hollow doll-eyes.

"You're not so bad," she said. I could hear the whispery little Idea saying what she did, just a heartbeat ahead. Huh. I guess she _really _wasn't very complicated, if she was saying the first thing I'd put in her head. "No wonder Luci likes you."

"Thanks," I said, smiling. I made sure to swap back to reality before I started wolfing down my food. "Sorry, but I've got to go track down Ms Hamstead," I said, once I'd had all I could tolerate of canteen food. It wasn't exactly appetising, even without maggots squirming in it. "I need some help with a geography essay."

"Urgh, don't speak to me about geography," Faith said, still smiling despite her words. She rummaged in her pocket, pulling out her phone. "What's your number?"

I winced. "Don't have one. My dad won't let me."

"That sucks."

"Yeah, it does." I picked up my tray. "Anyway, might see you later."

"Sure thing!"

I went to put my tray away. Glancing back, I could still see the whiteness of the Idea in her hollow skull. It was something I'd learned over the last few months. Ideas weren't very strong, but they could nudge people around if they weren't thinking of much else. Faith didn't feel strongly about me one way or another beforehand, but now she sort of liked me. After all, Luci liked me, so that meant I had to be okay, right?

The Other Place wasn't really much more cynical than normal school socialising, I thought to myself. It was so much easier. You didn't have to spend as much time pretending to like the same things as someone else just to get to the stage where you were nice and safe acquaintances.

The atmosphere in the school, though, was anything but safe. You'd have to be blind to miss the simmering tension, and I saw more than anyone else could. The same anger that licked at Dad jumped from person to person, like a wildfire. There was fear, too; cold, clammy, cloying. But it fed the fire like oil, and the anger left fear in its wake. People were whispering in the real world, but in the Other Place they took on a thick substance, strands weaving together like thick cobwebs.

The skinhead locker room was on the third floor. It wasn't like there was a sign posted there, but I was glad I was in Isolation. This wasn't a place for people like me. If I hadn't been unseen, I'd probably have been told to fuck off – and I was white and local. I felt sorry for the people who'd been given lockers here. They were all busted, and you didn't linger if you didn't 'belong'. A group was already gathered there, weaving cobwebs around each other as they shouted and hissed. I checked them for black stains and then rose out of the Other Place. None of them were killers, and I wanted to see their faces properly.

"Look, I fucking saw Justin," a short brown-haired girl raised her voice, drawing my attention. "I saw his body. It was… there was blood everywhere! And… and his arm was off…" Her voice sank down to a hollow whisper.

I didn't think she was lying. She was too scared to be lying. I'd seen blood. If there really had been body parts, then they'd cleaned them up ASAP. I thought you weren't meant to tamper with a crime scene, but I guessed they'd wanted to stop any of us seeing it. Apparently that hadn't worked.

"You mean…" one of the boys said uneasily. "Well, was it… like… I dunno. Really all the way all off?"

"All the way." She didn't shout it. She just sounded numb.

"Fuck."

Yeah, fuck. For the first time in my life, I was in total agreement with a skinhead. That made it way more serious than someone getting stabbed. Arms didn't get torn off at school unless someone was going Carrie.

But if that was true, why hadn't they sent us home?

I almost jumped out of my skin when someone thumped the locker right next to me. The broken door bounced on its hinges, revealing an internal coating of posters of white rappers.

"Fucking Japs," growled a blonde girl. Her hair was long on top, but she'd shaved the sides shorter. Train tracks drawn in with clippers traced their way back over her ears.

"You think so, 'Tash?"

"Yeah. Who else would do that?" She slammed the locker again. "They got one of their big brothers in the Japfia to kill him."

"I dunno," one of the boys said, running his hand over his scalp. "What if it was the 205 NY Crew? I mean, he lives 'round there and they've been going for anyone who walks through their turf."

"Nah," 'Tash said. "Listen to what June said. They tore his fucking arms off. Who'd do this but that dragon-freak who runs the Japfia?"

I'd heard enough. So the rumours were right. God. The school was going to explode. Still, I had a lead. They might have dismissed the idea that it was one of the Ormswood gangs, but that seemed way more likely to me than the head of the Boumei deciding to just show up and dismember a random schoolkid. They probably _wanted_ to think that it was a Japanese ganglord who killed their friend, but I doubted it. I'd found out a bit more stuff about the local gangs in the past few months, but I'd been keeping well away from the Japanese Mafia. Sure, I had Isolation, but I knew some parahumans could see through it and there was no way I was going to have a chance against a giant dragon-man if he saw me. But he breathed fire and stuff, and there hadn't been any burn marks near the blood.

I drifted off, and spent the rest of lunch wandering through school. Everyone seemed to have their own theory, but I didn't find any killers. Or any giant dragon-men, for that matter.

I slumped against an empty patch of wall and took off my glasses, pinching the brow of my nose as I scrunched my eyes shut. The Other Place was exhausting like this. Most people seemed to think it was simply some gang stabbing. No one else seemed to know that the victim had an arm torn off. So how did that June girl get there so fast? The ambulance must have covered up the corpse quickly. Had she been there from the start, and seen even more than she was telling? I'd have to go back and investigate, but—

My chain of thought was shattered by the figure stepped around the corner. They drew closer, down the corridor, grey and drab Not a person. A thing. No more human than the walls.

There was a grey man. Here. At school. I pressed myself up against the wall and prayed to God that _thing _wouldn't notice me in the crowded corridors. I was surrounded by pig-faced boys and burning skull-women and ranting graffiti, but that one bland grey-suited figure was scarier than anything in the Other Place. It was flanked by a pair of cops, but they were real people, twisted and strange but _real_ and not like that _thing_.

It passed me by without a glance. I couldn't breathe. My stomach felt like it was about to crawl out of my mouth. What was one of them doing here? Did that mean the bird woman was here too? God. _She _was here and she was still hunting me and—

Dashing for the nearest bathroom, I locked myself in a cubicle. Then I lifted my feet so no one could see me just by looking for legs. I knew how to hide in bathrooms.

I exhaled Phobia. Then I jabbed iron nails into her rigid, screaming mask until I felt better. Until I could breathe without feeling like I was going to throw up. Until I could think clearly.

I'd panicked. This didn't mean the bird woman knew I was here. If she did, she'd have come for me right away. I wouldn't have been able to hide from her, not like the grey men. She could see through Isolation.

So I was safe. For now.

Kirsty had told me, in her own special way, that there were other parahumans like the bird-woman. They gave orders to the grey men. I'd done a lot of speculation over the last few months. Who did she work for? Did she make the grey men? Were they some kind of tinkertech clones, like a special high-end genejack? Or were they brainwashed slaves?

There was a bit of me that wanted to run. I could get a barbed-wire angel to tear open a hole in the world, and run somewhere where she wouldn't find me. It was tempting, but I couldn't do that. The Principal had said they'd be taking names, and if I wasn't there, questions would be asked. That was more likely to lead them to me than if I stayed. I bet everyone who wasn't here was going to get a visit from the cops.

Besides, if they were here… this might be a chance to learn something. I ran my fingers through my hair, exhaling slowly.

Now, that was a thought. Maybe I didn't need to build up a list of suspects. Maybe the police could do it for me. I'd have to get my hands on their list of names, but if they were asking questions all across the city they'd have to make copies. Grabbing one for myself shouldn't be too hard.

And I could _find _people with their names.

Whether it was a gang thing or someone going Carrie, I wanted to find the killer. Maybe they were a villain. Maybe they were just someone like me, who'd had one really bad day. Either way, they had to be parahuman, so I wanted to talk to them. I wanted to know why. Why the grey men were after them, why they'd taken someone's arm off, why they'd run.

And if the bird woman really was interested in them, I might be able to find out more about what those people wanted.

And what they were.


	37. Masks 4-04

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 4.04**

Another announcement chimed in just before the end of the day, letting us know that school was going to be closed tomorrow. That was okay with me. They probably needed the time to clean everything up, and it wasn't like anyone would be able to concentrate, anyway.

Normally I couldn't leave school fast enough, but today I broke off from the mass of students shuffling out the south gate, escorted by watching teachers. A moment later I was wrapped in Isolation, making my way down emptying school corridors towards the Principal's office. My guess was that the cops would have given a list of students they were looking for, with instructions to call if they showed up at school. I'd just need a copy myself. I could photograph it, or something.

As I brushed past a small crowd of students being herded outside, I had a cherub bring me my coat and mask. They couldn't see me, but that bird woman could. If she was here, I couldn't let her see my face.

Though she'd still know who I was. There weren't many invisible gasmask girls running around Brockton Bay. What if I wore a different costume? I'd need to put another one together. Or several. Something for later.

I didn't really need to sneak, under cover of Isolation. I did it anyway, my heart pounding in my chest as my breath rasped inside my mask. The place was still busy with students being escorted from classes and bathrooms by scattered cops and teachers. Among them were a grey man and woman in soaked black suits, walking down the hallway towards me. The words on their foreheads read **INVESTIGATE** and **ISOLATE** respectively, and I freaked out for a moment. Were they staring straight at me? Could they see through my powers, spot me in the crowd? Why hadn't the Other Place misspelled those words?

The moment passed, and they moved on. Thank God.

Of course, given my luck Principal Blackwell was right in the centre of the barely organised chaos. One of my old teachers – Mr Gladly, who taught Parahuman Studies – came out of her office, looking ill. I wondered what he'd been told, but used the chance to tailgate in through her door before it closed. Paper coffee cups were crumpled and scattered across her desk, along with several big blue binders. The principal herself was on the phone. Her skin was sallow and her short black hair was out of place.

"… I think I've got the code here for the incident report. Yes… uh, it's 144. 531. 18 dash I. No, no. Eighteen. One eight. And 'I' for igloo. The contact officer is Mark Ells." She propped her phone against her shoulder and hunted on her desk for pens. "Just give me a moment, I'll make a note of this. Can you start again, please?"

Trying to make as little noise as possible, I paced around Principal Blackwell. Despite how useless she'd been when I needed help, I still felt sorry for her. It was pretty obvious she could barely run the school on a day-to-day basis. There was no way she'd be able to cope with a murder on top of everything else.

"Mmm," she said, in response to something. "Well, they don't have any solid suspects yet, but they're thinking it might have been gang related."

I let the chill of the Other Place surround me, and took a second look. The room hadn't changed much since my last visit. It still smelt of rising damp and abandoned places, and the windows were still covered in illegible scrawls. Blackwell's dog-like face was locked in a frown. I breathed an Idea into her ear, watching as it squirmed in.

"Remind them what the police told you to do," it hissed, as I leaned over her shoulder to look at her notes.

She paused, and rubbed her temples with a hand covered in matted fur. "Anyway, let's just go over the procedures again," she said into themould-coated phone. "I've got a list of students they want to talk to. They're the ones who weren't on the school grounds when we did the check. No, no, I know. Most of them are just going to be playing truant, but that's what we have to do. They're stationing an officer here, so if any of them turn up, they can question them. And while we're closed, they'll sweep the grounds for the murder weapon. Yes, or bloody clothes."

"That's enough," I whispered. The Idea wriggled out of her ear and came apart into a dark mist.

She paused. "Sorry, my head is in a mess at the moment," she apologised to the person on the other end of the phone. "Today is hectic. I'm just tripping over myself. There's so many things I need to do, and I'm still preparing for the big staff meeting at five. God knows how this will go."

I kept half an ear open for her conversation while I flicked through the binders on her desk, looking for the list of names she'd mentioned. She'd obviously been looking at it recently, because it didn't take long. It looked like it was about sixty or so names. Yeah, good job, Winslow. Great job with the truancy rate.

Well, I'd be taking that. Or… no, that'd make her suspicious. Instead, I put it down on her desk and sent another Idea crawling into her brain. Right away she started glancing at it, and after about a minute she hung up.

"What if I lose it?" she muttered to herself. Yeah, best to be on the safe side, right? With a weary sigh, she shifted to her computer, and tugged a slip of paper from inside of one of the books on her desk. She lay it down next to her keyboard, and I read it as she typed. It said

**its effORT too MemoRize  
Whn iT chanGES everi MUNTH **

Oh. Right. Other Place. A moment later, it turned out to say

_Username: blackwellj  
Password: jngpu9bhg_

Well. That was something useful to know. No wonder she couldn't be bothered to memorise her password. I scribbled it down in my notebook. That'd last for a month, and I bet she always hid those slips in that book. Honestly, I was surprised Winslow was making staff change their passwords monthly. This was a high school, not Fort Knox.

I made my way to the printer as she fiddled with her mouse, and watched as it ground to life with a mix of hums, squeaks, and paper-crumpling coughs. I wasn't even in the Other Place, and the noise was upsetting. It took so long to get started that Blackwell was standing right next to me by the time it actually started printing.

It was time to try something I'd worked out a little while ago. I chose a specific butterfly in the swarm that made up Isolation, urging it toward the printer with a breath through pursed lips. Other human-headed butterflies followed it, swarming around the paper as it finally emerged.

Blackwell just stared straight at the printing tray. She couldn't see the papers, any more than she could see me. "Did it not work?" she asked the thin air. "Stupid machine. I know it started." She peered at the printer, checking the lights and rattling at one of the trays. "Are you out of ink?" she asked it. "Or… is it a paper thing? " I let the Idea wriggle away into nothing. "Damn it. I really don't need this now on top of everything else. Not now."

Shaking her head, the principal headed back to her desk. I tucked the print-out into my bag. She had a pile of the binders of names and faces that teachers used to identify students, probably to help the cops. Grabbing one of them, I left her office. I didn't want to be in here if the bird lady showed up. Or anyone like her. I headed straight for the lockers, where the last wave of students was still lingering, and sent my mask and coat back to my hideout before dropping Isolation. I was just another student when I left the grounds.

I was simmering the entire way home. I couldn't believe the grey men had shown up here, at school. Who would send things like that to a school? Did they know I went to Winslow? I'd tried to track them down, after last time, and found absolutely nothing. Why were they swarming out of the woodwork now. Was it just because a skinhead had died? What were they up to? What were they planning?

I realised that I was grinding my teeth, and forced myself to relax. I wasn't scared, I was angry… but I was pretty sure that was just because there hadn't been any sign of the bird woman. She had to be some kind of parahuman, if she could see through Isolation. And with her suit, and the way she'd controlled the police, I guessed she had to be part of a big group. Maybe the grey men were just their lackeys or something. Maybe they sent them around to look into _every_ mysterious murder. If she wasn't there, it meant they weren't being serious about it. Whoever 'they' were.

Yes, I thought to myself, relaxing slightly. Yes. That made sense. After all, they'd shown up at the killings down near the docks, and that definitely qualified as weird. Now someone had shown up dead under strange circumstances at Winslow, and here they were. And Kirsty… well, talking to her about her past was both sad and uncomfortable, but she'd said that the people 'whose souls had been eaten by demons' had killed people.

Maybe they'd show up at every murder scene in Brockton Bay. Maybe every murder in the country. No, no way, right? There couldn't be _too _many of them. I'd have seen more of them by now, considering the kind of places I'd been spending my time. It wasn't like I'd seen any walking the streets.

My mind was still whirring in the warm spring afternoon as I reached the front door. The phone was ringing loudly just inside, and I barely managed to fumble the locks open and dash over before it stopped.

"Hebert househ—"

"Taylor!" It was Dad. "Thank God!"

"What's the matter?" I asked, fear churning in my stomach.

"You're alright!"

Oh. Of course. I felt all the tension leave my body, almost as thoroughly as if I'd trapped it in Phobia. "Yeah, I'm fine," I said.

"It's just that the news was saying that someone had died at Winslow and—"

"Dad. I'm fine." Poor Dad, I suddenly realised. God, no wonder he was freaking out. "Yeah, don't worry. All I saw was that there were ambulances and they'd cordoned off an area."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I really don't know. There's a bunch of rumours going around that it was something gang related."

"Oh, thank God," he breathed. "So you're safe."

"Yeah, Dad, I'm safe. School's cancelled tomorrow. There were cops all over the place. The place's a crime scene, so I guess they don't want us ruining stuff." Except they didn't send us home at lunchtime, I thought to myself, frowning.

"And you're feeling alright? You're not feeling—"

"Dad. I'm fine, okay," I said. "I didn't see anything… out of the ordinary." That was the truth, it just wasn't very honest. The Other Place gave me my daily dose of horrors.

Wait, no, it wasn't the truth either. Grey men didn't usually show up at school.

"Listen, stay at home," he said. "I'll be back around seven, got it? I want to talk to you. I'm just glad you're okay."

"Yeah, Dad," I said. "I'll probably have eaten, but I'll make sure to leave you some of the chilli."

He chuckled. It sounded more like a release valve than actual humour. "Yeah. Don't eat it all, okay? See you later. Love you."

"Yeah, love you," I said, putting down the phone. Man. Poor Dad. I pursed my lips. I might have to do something nice for him. He didn't need that kind of stress on top of everything else. I ran my hands through my hair and sighed. They hadn't bothered to give us any homework in the afternoon, obviously, but Mr Singh'd still given us English work this morning.

Screw that. I'd do it tomorrow. It was time to look at the list of names, and check them all for the traces of murder in the Other Place. I bet I'd be able to rule out a whole lot of suspects quickly.

… unfortunately, I was wrong. Three quarters of an hour later I was sat in my room, scowling between the book of names and pictures, and the list of potential suspects. I'd tracked down a few in my TV, but they hadn't been soaked in the black oil, and there hadn't been any sign of parahuman powers in my quick checks.

And there were a lot of people that my powers didn't seem to work on. Almost all of them were Japanese. Sniffer couldn't find them. Watcher Doll couldn't see them. Was there some kind of tinkertech jammer in Little Tokyo that my powers couldn't see into? No, I'd walked through Little Tokyo, and I was pretty sure that the Other Place would have shown me another power interfering with my own. It would have been some kind of beautiful glowing rainbow or shield or something.

Maybe it was the grey men? I dismissed the thought with a shudder. No, no, there was no way they could have captured so many people so quickly. Plus, I didn't know for sure that they could block my powers like that. I couldn't blame everything on them. There had to be something I was missing.

Urgh. I rubbed my eyes with the balls of my hands. There was nothing for it. I did know someone who might be able to tell me what was going on. I just hoped that I could actually interpret what she said.

Checking my watch, I nodded to myself. There should be time to do this before Dad got home. I had a couple of hours if he was going to be back after seven.

I went over to my mirror. In the Other Place, it showed me the scar I'd left in the world. Breathing out an angel, I ordered it to open the corridor back up. The cold seeped into my bones as I picked my way through the narrow space, avoiding the nail-covered walls.

I sank down when I emerged, kneeling on dusty concrete in the hall of mirrors. Just… just had to get my breath back. It was physically hard travelling through the Other Place, though not as horrible as when an angel carried me directly.

Pulling myself to my feet, I looked around the forgotten place. I'd drawn a clear trail through the dust wherever I'd walked back and forth, and even left some clear footprints. Anyone else who got down here would be able to find their way around just by walking in my footsteps.

Every mirror was clean, though. I'd dusted them down with an old cloth, and in the dim green light of my glowsticks they reflected my face like a Halloween witch's mask. Each marker-pen arch was split by a thin blackish scar in the Other Place, a long-distance doorway it had taken Needle Hag at least an hour to weave together. In the real world, I'd pinned a polaroid over every corridor entrance, a reminder of where it connected to. This place had gone from a forgotten old ballet practice room to a hub that criss-crossed the entire city.

With this, I could get from my bedroom to all kinds of forgotten places, all over Brockton Bay, in less than a minute.

Exhaling a cherub, I stared into its cracked doll-face. "Cherub," I said. "Find Kirsty. Tell her that I want to talk to her in the mirror room, and tell me what she says."

I took the chance to hunt down the wind-up flashlight I'd stashed down here. Proper white light helped things feel much better.

The cherub returned. "Of c-course, Taylor," it said in Kirsty's voice. "I am r-ready to pass through Heaven when you open the way for me."

I sagged again as one of my angels wrenched open the pathway for Kirsty, tasting blood in my mouth. Oh, I was going to be paying for this in the morning. She emerged in her pyjamas and her slippers, holding a little glowing warm orb in her hand. It cast a soft golden light and took the chill off the air down here. It almost made up for the fact that I could see what it looked like in the Other Place. It was a little blackened stone head that looked like it should have been from a statue of a cherub.

"Taylor," Kirsty said. "Yuh- you have called me here. Is something wrong?" She gave a halting, hesitant smile. "Or d-did you just want to do something together? Are we g-going to the park again?"

I'd tried to give Kirsty some time away from the hospital, as part of my campaign to figure out how to help her. Maybe I just felt like I owed her, but… it scared me, the idea that she might not have been outside in literally a decade. She might have _theoretically_ been much older than me, since she didn't seem to age, but in terms of actual living? I wasn't so sure.

"It's just a quick visit," I said. "Come on. Let's go sit down. I've got some questions."

I took her to the main room. It had once been the cafeteria, but I'd half-filled it with things I'd found going cheap. Now it looked a bit like a rummage shop. Cans and tins, bundled-up survival gear… I'd pinned up maps of the city on the walls and marked my corridors on them in pen, and I was starting to collect newspapers and books which sat in stacks on tables and against the walls. It meant that I could always send a cherub down here to bring me something I needed. The room had acquired a faint smell of old paper.

Even the old clothing mannequins were scattered around, with polaroids taped to their faces. They'd turned out to be useful for tracking people. I'd considered tried them in different poses around the room, but it had creeped me out a bit too much.

Kirsty carefully sat down on one of the couches, crossing her legs. She didn't comment on the mannequins. I sat down on the other, offered her a Coke from one of the piles, and started to explain why I was having problems tracking down people. She only seemed to be half-paying attention, with the other half focussed on the little ball of light in her hands.

"So that's my issue," I concluded. "Basically, my… uh, my angels and my cherubs can't find some of these people. And I need to find them because there were grey men at my school."

Now I had her full attention. Kirsty hugged the ball to her chest and swallowed, staring at me with watery eyes. The scars on her face twisted painfully, and I got ready to exhale Phobia to calm her down. "Are you s-sure?" she whispered.

"Yes," I said. "They had the black words on their foreheads, and they were grey and lifeless. There wasn't any sign of a bird woman."

"The bird people d-don't show up much," Kirsty whispered. "They're scary. The grey men aren't r-real people. They have n-no souls so they can't hear the d-devil. But the kings who r-rule over them aren't s-servants of the devil or of G-God. God told me that. We are God's ch-chosen. We shouldn't trust them. He said so."

"Did he?" I said.

"Yes. They're bad men. And bad girls. Did they see you?"

I shook my head. "No. The grey men don't seem to be able to see through my powers."

"Thank God," Kirsty said. It wasn't a generic expression of relief. It was more like an imperative. She reached over, and took the Coke. She drank it in tiny, bird-like sips. "They w-will look for you, Taylor. If they know you're there. They w-won't stop." She swallowed. "And their leaders remember me. God hides me in the w-world, but the bird women and the others st-stand apart from it. They'll… they'll remember you too." She looked me in the eyes. "I don't want you to get h-hurt."

I forced out an awkward laugh. I wasn't really used to that kind of sincerity. "Well, I don't want to get hurt, either." She nodded, and her gaze returned to the ball of light in her hands. I waited a moment. "So. Um. About the way my power can't find some of the people—"

"Taylor?" Kirsty asked, eyes bouncing to my face before looking away again. She placed the ball of light down on the floor with a stony click. The light cast strange shadows on her face from below. The words on the Coke cans seemed to dance in the soft golden light. "Can I see one of your angels now?" she said.

Blinking, I tried to adjust my mind to Kirsty-logic. "Why?"

"Because I want to ask it some questions."

She wanted to ask my powers some questions? Talking to Kirsty was always an experience and a half. Sinking back into the Other Place, I breathed out a barbed wire angel. It spread its rusty wings, and seemed to glower down at the other girl. Its breath hissed behind its gas mask. I wasn't quite sure how they hissed, actually. They didn't seem to have room for lungs in among their barbed wire.

Rising, Kirsty reached out. Her Other Place was intruding around her, and I could smell the perfumed smoke. The reflection of the couch smouldered and charred. Flames licked around her feet and around her hands as she reached up and stroked the gas mask face of the angel. "You're beautiful," she whispered to it. I didn't think flattery would help. "Praise be to the Lord God, that he crafted such wonders to aid the Elect." She took a deep shuddering breath, and bowed her head to the barbed-wire angel, clasping her hands together.

"Praise be to the Lord God. Pl-please, holy one, in the name of the Lord God who rules this ashen Earth from Heaven, heed m-my plea. T-Taylor, your servant who makes your will manifest, wishes to know why she cannot find some people. Angel, _pl-please _tell me."

The angel reached out, and brushed her cheek with its clawed hand. Kirsty drew in a little gasp. The monstrous thing I'd made let out an extended, hissing rasp. "Thank you," Kirsty said softly, breathily. "You c-can let it return to Heaven, Taylor."

I let the form of the barbed wire disappear. A tear-like dribble of blood oozed its way down Kirsty's cheek, from where the angel had touched her. Her eyes were wide; her pupils wide and dilated. She was panting softly. "Did you understand that?" I asked.

"It gave me a vision," she said, in the same soft whisper that was almost a moan. Her legs sagged, and she fell to her knees. "God spoke through it. He is… is so beautiful." She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging herself into a tight ball like she was trying to trap the feelings inside and not let them out. There were tears welling up in her unfocussed eyes. "I c-can't wait until the R-Rapture. It'll be w-wonderful. W-we'll be with God, you and me."

"Well, that's good," I said uneasily. Rummaging through one of my bags, I dug out a packet of tissues and carefully approached her. She didn't move as I dabbed at her face, trying to wipe away the blood. I handed her another tissue for her eyes. "Did… did, uh, he say—"

"He did," she said, smiling despite her tears. "T-Taylor, your angels are creatures of truth. These are the ways that they search for sinners; firstly, by the light of life and flesh and blood, secondly by the light of semblance and image, thirdly and most weakly by the reflected light of the experience of others. Your angels are the servants of St Peter, who knows m-men by the names they shall be known on Judgment Day, and you shall sit at their head when the sins of all men are judged. But as they – and you – are servants of j-judgement, without such a name they find it hard to see in this ash-filled world."

I frowned as I tried to translate this from Kirsty-ese. I'd thought she was just crazy at first, but sometimes – like now – I had suspicions that maybe she was really communicating with something. She'd hardly stuttered at all, and this time even her vocabulary had changed. Who used words like 'semblance', anyway? "So… you're saying that my angels can track someone by their blood, with an image, or with a description? And I need to know their real name to do it more effectively?"

"I have f-faith," she said.

Well, I could have done with certainty, but it made sense. Watcher Doll could find people by photos, while Sniffer had found my mother's flute because I'd known it so well. And I'd never tried it, but I just bet it _would_ be easier to track someone down if I had a blood sample. My angels really liked blood. Maybe they remembered the locker. That was not a happy thought. And…

"Wait," I said uneasily. "So that means that they can't find superheroes or supervillains. Because they don't use their real names."

"Yes," Kirsty said earnestly. "I think they use false names to spite God. But they will be punished for it."

It had worked to find Glory Girl… but wait, I realised suddenly. Of course, I'd known her real name too.

Crap.

Was I not the first person with powers like this? I mean, when you looked at it objectively, the way all the capes went around with false names was a bit odd. Cops didn't do it. Criminals back before capes didn't do it. I mean, they did it in the old comics, but, like… those were stories. The only capes I could think of who tried public identities were the New Wave Movement, and that'd gone wrong.

Had there been someone out there who'd used their real identities against them? Someone… like me? Only a villain.

I looked Kirsty up and down as she sipped at her Coke, holding the glowing ball in her free hand. Overhead, there was the rumble of something heavy passing over the road above. Only the heaviest vehicles were loud enough to be more than background noise, down here in this forgotten basement. "How many people know how my power works?" I asked.

Kirsty looked down, lip wobbling. "I d-don't know," she said. "S-sorry."

"That means it's probably not a jamming device in Little Tokyo," I said out loud. I vaguely recalled that remote viewing wasn't a very common power. Not unheard of, but not common. "But… ah." Realisation dawned. "I bet these names, the ones they use at school, aren't real," I said.

She stared at me expectantly.

"Well, uh, if they're in the country with false papers or… or they're using an American first name or something." I checked the list and the names I'd underlined. "Like this one. Joe Inoki. I bet the reason it isn't working is that his real name isn't Joe."

"Oh." Kirsty straightened up. She licked the edge of her mouth, tongue running over one of her scars. "I… um. I think… no. N-never mind. A w-woman should remain humble and not put herself forwards."

"Am I wrong?" I asked.

"No. I think you m-might be right," she said, wincing and looking away. In most people, that would be a marker of dishonesty, but for Kirsty that was normal behaviour. She hated to look me in the eye. "I h-had an idea, but I d-don't think it would work."

I cocked my head. "No, really," I said. "I'm interested."

"W-well, the angels reveal. Um. The souls of men to me." She looked back at me, eyes wide. "Yours is so beautiful," she said softly. "God has b-blessed you." She reached out, hand shaking. "You are a light of God in this ashen world." She looked away. "I c-can see other souls. The gr-grey men have no souls, but the s-souls of their masters sh-shine with light they st-stole from God." Her face crinkled up in a frown. "And s-sinners who consort w-with false gods are d-different too. They are like the pr-priests of the Pharaoh, t-turning their staffs into snakes."

I pinched my brow. "What are you saying?"

"Th-they say they are like the… the Greek heroes," Kirsty said, arms hunched in on herself. She stared intently at her can. "But the Greeks didn't worship God. They were wicked and they worshipped their false g-gods. So that's why you c-can't trust superheroes, even if they pr-pretend to be good. It's l-like the comics. They're bad and g-good girls don't read them."

I sat in silence, trying to think of something to say. She really was a mess. God knew our powers were hard to handle – she'd certainly agree that he did – but Kirsty clearly hadn't been dealt a good hand of cards to start with. I'd heard of those kinds of fundamentalist churches. The ones that claimed capes were devil-worshippers or devils or possessed or a sign of the apocalypse or things like that. "So you can see capes and they look different to you?" I said kindly. "Different from me and you, I mean. I can see them too, you know. I've been looking for them. They have a bright glow from their powers. It is different from what we have."

Kirsty's hands were shaking so much it was a good thing she'd drunk half the can already, or she would be spilling it over her cotton pyjamas. "I c-can look for them," she mumbled. "Help you f-f-f-find them."

The lights overhead started flickering on and off, scattering bright light everywhere. I could hear static over the abandoned announcement system. It sounded like prayers. "Kirsty, you need to calm down. Calm down. Please. Calm down. Do you want an, an angel to help you calm down?" I asked her.

She nodded, a sharp bobbing motion. She was whispering faintly to herself. She wasn't in any state to help. Anyway, I could see parahumans on my own just fine.

"Good." Carefully, I sunk back into the Other Place and set Phobia to drawing out her fear. My creature's rigid mask gibbered at me, but I thought of nails and piercing and she gave in. I moved next to her, and Kirsty relaxed as Phobia drew off her fears and worries. In fact, she'd been so tense that she sagged backwards, looking almost boneless.

"Thank you, Taylor," Kirsty said faintly. She was wreathed in smoke, and the fires were burning bright. I could feel the phantom heat from where I stood. "I… I think I want to go back home now. I h-have to pray. S-sorry."

I grit my teeth and braved the fires of her Other Place as I helped her up, my own damp darkness protecting me. She was heavy – certainly more solidly built than me, for all she was shorter. "You don't need to say sorry," I said.

"I do. I'm w-weak." The fires surged around her. My skin felt taut and dry. I had the uncanny feeling that if it wasn't for my own Other Place, I'd be standing in the middle of a bonfire. Smoke scratched at the back of my throat.

"You're not weak."

"I am. I'm w-weak and you're so strong. Your angels obey you. All the time. They don't b-burn things."

I didn't feel I could answer that. What was I meant to say? That I had an advantage because I could put my nervous breakdowns under lock and key? That I _couldn't_ set things on fire – and I had tried just to see if that was a thing I could do – so it wasn't a surprise that I hadn't burned anything? That there was no surprise I was more stable than her, because I came from a normal family and a few years of bullying was nothing compared to what she implied her mother had done to her?

"Pl-please don't forget about me," she whispered. There was real desperation in her voice.

"I'm not going to forget about you," I said. "I remember you, remember? Even when no one else does. Soon, we're going to the movies together, okay? I'll find something nice and calm and fun. I think Maleen is coming out soon, yeah? You'd like that?"

"Maleen?"

Oh yeah, I guess she wouldn't have heard of that. "It's the new Disney movie."

"Oh. I th-think I'd like that. Do you pr-promise?"

"I promise I'll try my best," I said. It wasn't an unconditional promise, but I didn't want to make one of those. I'd just let her down if it turned out to be impossible.

"Thank you." Back in the hall of mirrors, I reopened the corridor back to her hospital room. She tottered through, and I slumped out of the Other Place with an exhausted sigh. Poor Kirsty. I felt bad about dragging her out here just for information – but what was I supposed to do? I didn't understand my power. And I was trying to help her. I really was.

Heading back into the main room, I noticed the orb of light she'd been playing with had gone out. In the Other Place there was just a crumbling stone head that already was barely recognisable. I picked up her half-finished can, downed it, and sat down. I needed to get some strength back. I'd exhausted myself today, with three angels, plus… ugh, far too many cherubs. My lips were cracked and dry, and I was aching all over. I could feel my abdomen throbbing, but it wasn't the right time of the month for my period.

Yanking up my t-shirt and running the flashlight over it, I found a hand-shaped bruise on my stomach. It was like someone had slapped me there, hard, but it wasn't a human hand. It was too long-fingered, and the proportions were all wrong.

"Crap, crap, crap," I muttered. The barbed wire angels were taking their toll on my body, and it wasn't just migraines, nosebleeds, and low blood-sugar. That was one of their hands. I was going to have to hide this from people. I didn't want questions as to why I had a bruise like that there. Why _did _I have a bruise like that? There, of all places?

Worse, I needed to head home right now. If I lingered I'd doze off, and then I wouldn't be there when Dad got home. That meant I'd have to call on another barbed-wire angel. Which meant more pain. And more fatigue. And probably more bleeding.

I groaned into the dim quiet.

In the end I made it, and then collapsed straight into my bed, shivering from the cold of the Other Place. It sank right into my bones, especially the toes. I barely had enough strength left to wriggle out of my dusty clothes and into my PJs. My co-ordination was just as bad, I was shaking so much. Those cherubs would have taken it out of me on a normal day, and then four angels on top of that? Stupid, stupid, stupid. I really hoped this wasn't going to wipe me out as badly as when I was chased by the bird woman.

I drifted off into freezing cold nightmares. Wrapped in a blanket, I stumbled through the Other Place. My hidden base was flooding, and the mirrors were all gone, and I couldn't get out! The dark water started as just puddles, but it was rising and by the time it had reached my thighs I was trying not to scream.

Then something grabbed me and I did scream.

"Taylor? Taylor?" I jolted awake. Blearily I squinted up at Dad, scrabbling for my glasses.

"Wh't tim' is it?" I managed. A sudden moment of panic flooded through me. I was going to be late for school and the monster was—

He checked his watch. "Nineteen thirty. What's the matter? Why are you in bed?"

Shifting, I groaned. I could feel the cold sweat beading on my forehead. "I just went to lie down," I said.

"In your PJs?"

I peered at him, trying to sit up. My body ached all over and the bruise on my stomach was itching. I really didn't want him checking me for injuries. "I was getting cramps all day," I lied. It was a super-useful excuse. It didn't work on female teachers when I wanted to sit out gym, but worked great on men. "It's a girl thing."

"Oh. Oh." He looked decidedly uncomfortable. "Uh… can I do anything to help?"

I was hungry, I realised. I really had to get out of bed and get some food in me. "Warm milk would be nice," I said, trying to smile like someone with painful menstrual cramps. I did a remarkably good job of it. Being slapped in the stomach by a horrible barbed wire monster helped complete the illusion. "And then I'll try to see if I can eat anything."

"I haven't eaten yet," Dad said. "I'll heat up the chilli for both of us, then." He patted my hand, cautiously. "It's fine if you can't manage everything."

He brought me the milk while I tried to sit up. Everything ached, and I was shaking. I could still feel the cold of the Other Place in my bones. Every so often I'd be reminded of the handprint, and it'd start aching all over again. Maybe it wasn't an angel slapping me. Maybe it was a sign of one trying to claw its way out.

I immediately wished I hadn't thought that.

"You feel cold and clammy," Dad said, testing my brow. "Are you sure you're not ill?"

"I… I think it's kind of hitting home that someone died at school," I lied. "It wasn't bothering me, but then I got home and with that on top of how I felt…"

I shrugged, and regretted the motion. Dad put down the mug and gave me a hug. It was well-intentioned, but considering how bruised I felt it was one of the worst things he could have done. "Hey, hey," he said, ineffectually. "Come on. Drink your milk, and then you can come down and try to eat. If you don't feel like eating, you can just talk to me, yeah? Got to be better than sitting up here in your room worrying."

I smiled back. "Yeah. Thanks, Dad," I said, wrapping my hands around the warm mug and letting the chill in my bones leach out.

With something warm in me I was just about able to hobble my way downstairs, wrapped in a blanket like an old lady. The light in the kitchen was warm, even if one of the bulbs was humming and flicking faintly, and I stiffly plopped myself down at the table. The paint on the wall just at eye level was peeling, and the cork board was over-filled with reminders and dates. Dad flashed a grin at me from over by the microwave, which became somewhat more rigid when he saw how ill I must have looked.

No matter how I looked at it, the entire room was incredibly boring and mundane. I needed that. It wasn't at all like, to name an example chosen at random, a secret underground lair full of teleporting mirrors, creepy mannequins, and random old junk. I frowned, watching the microwave hum away. I really needed to find a way to start using the power in my base. A few power sockets were still hooked up to the mains, probably because they were on the same circuit as something in the buildings above. An electric kettle, a heater and a microwave would really help with making the place feel less like… well, like a forgotten basement.

"Maybe you shouldn't be out of bed?" he hinted. "I know I said you should eat, but maybe you need your rest."

"I'm hungry," I said. "I don't need to be feeling starving on top of everything else."

"Mmm." He peered in the microwave again, and looked about to ask me something, but then thought better of it. I could guess what he was going to say, though.

"So, yeah." I rubbed my hands together, fingers tracing the scars I'd got from the locker. "I don't really know what happened at school. I mean, I basically just heard an ambulance when I was in English, just before lunch. And then they sealed off the area by the bike lot, but I saw something that could have been blood on the floor. Don't worry," I hastened to assure him, "since I don't cycle in or hang out there smoking, I don't go anywhere near that place normally. I just… freaked out a bit about the idea of someone dying."

"Ah," he said.

"I mean, the rumours were that the dead guy was a skinhead," I said. "So that'd make it something gang-linked."

"Mmm," he said.

"I was kind of expecting more questions," I said, a little tartly.

Dad ran his hands through his short, balding dark hair. "I just don't want to stress you out," he said. "Plus, you said you didn't know much. I'm sure things'll be clearer in time."

Well, they certainly would be if I had anything to say about it. "Yeah," I agreed, wrapping my blanket tighter around myself.

Dad served the reheated chilli with some instant rice, and grabbed himself a beer. I focussed on eating. The chilli was hot and filling, and I was hungry – hungrier than usual. Sometimes my power left me feeling starving after using it, but sometimes it didn't. I guessed that the Other Place didn't want to feel it was too predictable in how it hurt me.

"Have there been gang problems at school?" he asked. "More than usual, I mean. I know Winslow has a gang problem, but do you think they're getting worse?"

I frowned. "I dunno," I said honestly. "I keep well away from the gangs. I've got enough shit—"

"Taylor," he chided me.

"Sorry, enough _poo_ – is that better? Enough _doody_? – in my life without getting involved in that kind of stuff at school." That was true enough. Sure, I might get involved in gang things as an extracurricular activity, but it's sort of hard to be a superhero if you don't fight crimes. "So I dunno if it's getting worse or better or what. There are bits of the school where you don't go if you're not a skinhead, or not Japanese, or whatever. So I don't go there. Because that would be dumb."

"Mmm." Outside, a fire truck screamed by. "So you haven't seen any sign of it getting worse?"

"No. Not really."

"And… places on the school you don't go if you're not in a gang? Have they threatened you?"

I loaded my fork up with rice. "Dad, I'm not going to be stupid and go into, like, that bathroom that the Japanese girls have taken over. They smoke in there, and I've heard some of them carry knives. It'd just be asking for trouble. So, no, I don't go in there."

Actually, I did go in once, under Isolation. They were smoking, texting, and talking with each other. I had no idea what they were saying. From the attitude, though, I suspected the topics under discussion were more men and make-up than mugging or murders.

I tilted my head and looked at him. "Why? What's going on?"

He sighed. "Things are getting worse," he said at last, tapping his fork on his plate. "There are bits in the city I wouldn't go now that would have been fine a year ago. Six months, even. The skinheads are getting organised. And some of my old friends were attacked by Patriotic gangs. I just want to know if things're bleeding through into the schools and that you're safe."

"What kind of old friends?" I asked him, worried. "Are you—"

Dad rubbed his hands together. "Not me, no. They're… look, they're with the Socialist Party." He caught my expression. "Taylor, the Socialists are a proper political party. They're not criminals. Skinheads firebombed their offices. I do worry they might go after the unions next, but… well, it's just a worry."

He might want to defend the Socialists, but they were behind the riots in Chicago a few years ago. "Yeah, well, I haven't seen any of that at school. I mean, like, there are fights. Especially between the skinheads and the Japanese, but some of the NY gangs are involved, too. But… I dunno." I shrugged. "I don't hang with any of them."

"And I'm glad of that," he said. He took a deep drink from his beer. "God, Taylor, just promise me you'll work hard and get into college. There's no future here. This city's rotting. Go somewhere like Detroit, where there are actually jobs."

"You're worrying me, Dad," I said, and put my fork down. "What happened?" Dad was always working, always stressing out over something, but he got frustrated, he got angry. He didn't talk like this.

He sighed, letting his head fall into his hands. "I just… I heard someone was dead at Winslow. It was on the news, over and over, and all I could think of was getting that phone call that you were in the hospital and how…"

"Dad! Dad! I'm fine, okay!" I realised we hadn't ever talked about how he'd felt, back at the start of the year. Therapy hadn't been fun, but it must have been even worse without it.

"I know, I know, but then I couldn't stop worrying and you weren't home yet and…" he took a deep breath. "Yes. You're fine. But I mean it about working hard. If you don't have a college degree, there's no future for you in this country. Too many people looking for jobs. The companies are spoilt for choice – you understand what that means, Taylor? It means they can treat you like junk and just hire something new. And… look, okay, some contacts I have are talking whispers of a right-to-work law being passed here. In Maine."

"Right-to-work?" I asked. "That sounds… good?"

He snorted. "That's why they call it that. No, it's very bad. It's a way of taking down unions." Cars rumbled outside as he stared down at his plate. "Look, I didn't mean to burden you with this. Things won't happen until next year at the earliest. It'll be after that recall election for the governor. Things are okay for me in the short term, but the medium term is… dicey. Yeah, dicey. Just… think about your future, okay? Work as hard as possible at school."

I swallowed. "O-okay, Dad," I said softly.

He cracked his knuckles. "Ah, to hell with it. I ruined any chance of a happy dinner. How about we take our bowls over to the TV and we can watch a film or something. I've had a bad day, you've had a bad day, let's just go watch Blazing Saddles or something."

I rubbed my eyes. I certainly wasn't up for any more use of my powers today. "Yeah, let's do it," I said, gingerly standing up. "And we can't mention anything about work or murders or school or anything."

"I won't if you won't," he countered.

"Deal."

We wound up watching Young Frankenstein. And just for a moment, things seemed better.


	38. Masks 4-05

_(AN: This chapter contains horror scenes that some readers may find disturbing, above and beyond the standards of this story. All attempts have been made to treat sensitive subject matters with care and sympathy.)_

**An Imago of Rust and Crimson**

**Chapter 4.05**

It was ten on a Saturday morning and I was standing in a shop's bathroom on the edge of Little Tokyo. The place was only meant for customers, but I'd made sure they hadn't seen me come in. I'd needed a place to get changed, and I was just about ready.

The mirror wasn't very useful for getting changed, in the Other Place. Its glass was cracked and dirty, and dark water was creeping down the frame. Someone had scrawled a message in lipstick on the surface.

**arE u shoor ur doing tHe Rite fing ****NOW****?**  
**Hav u CONsidered te priS thAT u mite Pay?**

I still didn't know where the writing came from, or if its messages were meant for me, but... yes. I was.

I took a deep breath, ignoring the nailed-up moans of Phobia from behind me, and smoothed down my outfit. I was wearing a uniform I'd borrowed from the cops, my hair tied up in a ponytail. It didn't look very good on me, but that was nothing new. You'd probably need some kind of silly fabric-focussed parahuman to make clothes that made me look good. The main thing was that it basically fit, even if I had to wear a man's shirt to get enough length in the sleeves.

My disguise wasn't perfect. Even with my height, I looked way too much like what I was – a teenage girl dressed up as a cop. But that's because I hadn't finished yet. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes as my stomach squirmed. I'd practiced this, and it hadn't been fun at all.

A moment after I exhaled, the red butterflies swarmed straight back to me, bloody wet wings plastering against my skin and congealing into my clothes. I was wrapped up tight in a clinging layer of filth, embraced directly by the Other Place. I kept my eyes shut, but the feelings didn't go away.

I opened my eyes to a monster. I'd braced myself, but it still came as a shock to look in the mirror and see someone who wasn't me. It was even worse to see a monster, a chipped and cracked blue china face staring back.

I'd made a disguise in the Other Place. A mask of a cop. I raised my hand, watching the monster move. Loose butterflies trailed behind my movements like embers. They were the same human-headed insects of Isolation, but each of them was wearing a little mask, too.

I couldn't see my Other disguise in the real world, but I could feel it. The squirming butterflies crawled and twitched all over me, barbed-wire legs prickling my skin. Other people felt it too. Impressionist, I was going to call this. If Isolation meant no-one saw me, Impressionist meant they only saw what I wanted them to see. People felt sure that I had to be what Impressionist depicted me as – so sure that they ignored any little details that didn't fit.

I pulled out a set of mirrored aviators from a pocket, and put them on to complete the disguise. In them, I could see a reflection of my reflection. I hadn't particularly liked mirrors, before I got my powers. They reminded me of how different I was from Emma, and it wasn't like there was much point checking how I looked with her on my case. But now mirrors were useful. Even my creatures liked them. I'd discovered a few tricks I could do with mirrors covering my eyes, after I bought these shades. I'd practiced them a lot, down in my hall of mirrors.

And with that done, I headed out. I had a list of names and addresses to check off, grabbed from the school records. I was going to see how many of the ones in this neighbourhood I could get done today, because they were more clustered.

It was strange to walk through the streets like this. I wasn't hidden by Isolation, so people weren't ignoring me. In fact, I got heads turning. I wasn't sure if that was some effect of Impressionist, or whether they just watched cops here. It was hard to tell if the attention or the squirming feeling of insect legs felt more uncomfortable.

The first address on my list, for 'Megan Satou', wasn't in Little Tokyo proper, though it was close enough that the street sign had Japanese words scrawled under it. The paper taped to the main entrance of the apartment telling people to buzz for entrance was in both languages. This place didn't look like a dump from the outside. I checked the Other Place reflection for hidden nastiness, but it just revealed flaking concrete and damp. That was normal for the Other Place. It was normal for most places, come to think of it.

"Hello, uh, this is Officer Beverley Marsh from the BBPD," I said, buzzing for Apartment 201 and trying my best to sound like a calm, authoritative responsible adult. The fact that Phobia was chained up on a bathroom floor was helping matters a lot. "We'd like to speak to you."

There was a pause. Then, "Again?" a woman said, as the door unlocked. "Come in."

Again? Did that mean the real cops had got here before me?

Mrs Satou looked harassed and tired when she opened the door. I wasn't quite sure how old she was, but there was a lot of grey in her hair. "You have more questions? I told you back then, Megumi is so in trouble for not going to school."

'Megumi'? Crap. I hadn't been able to find her when even the first three letters of her name was the same. That was frustrating. My powers needed to shape up and get their act together.

"No, ma'am," I said. "It's about something else. Is your daughter in? I need to see her."

The woman pursed her lips. "Wait," she said, turning. She shouted something in Japanese back into the apartment and got a shouted response. "I will get her," she said, eyes narrowed.

Megumi herself was short, and the bangs that framed her face were dyed blue. "Yeah?" she said insolently.

I inspected her in the Other Place. Weirdly, she reminded me of Dad, of all people. This was a very angry girl. Dull smoky red flames licked over her charred body. But there was no sign of a beautiful parahuman glow, or the black-red death water.

"No," I said, shaking my head. "It's not her. Sorry for bothering you."

The mother sagged in relief. "She is not in trouble?"

"No, ma'am. We're looking for a suspect, but she doesn't match the description."

Megumi said something to her mother in a tone that pretty much had to be rude, and stormed off. Mrs Satou looked embarrassed, and gave me a look which… uh, sort of implied she was thinking I was closer to her age than her daughter's.

"That is good. She is a good girl. I try to keep her out of trouble," she said.

"I'm sure you do a good job of it, ma'am," I said. "Thank you for your time."

That was one name to cross off the list. I marked it off as I walked away. So the cops had already been down this list? That was good and bad. Good in that they probably wouldn't be surprised to see a cop asking questions. But it was bad if I was wasting my time. What if they'd arrested the killer already?

… not that it would be a bad thing, of course. But I was using my Saturday to do this. I had other things I could be doing. Sighing, I put that thought out of mind and started walking to the next address. After a moment, I stopped to exhale Isolation. I didn't want people staring at me, even if I was in disguise.

Lunchtime came and went. My search wasn't going as quickly as I would have liked. I'd had the hope that I'd be able to clear the addresses in Little Tokyo today and get back early enough that Dad wouldn't ask questions, but sooner or later I was going to have to start making some choices. Maybe if I assumed it was a boy? That would cut the number of names by more than half.

Ninth on my list was 'Luke Okada'. Another fake English first name.

In all honesty, Little Tokyo was getting me down. It had once been an industrial district, but now it was crammed to the brim with temporary housing and converted warehouses. I checked that I had the right address, an overpacked apartment building that backed onto the train lines. Every few minutes, all other noise was drowned out by the rattle of the tracks. The parking lot in front of the building had been replaced with cargo-crate housing, stacked three storeys high. They'd even knocked through part of the second storey wall to connect the so-called-temporary housing up into the concrete sixties structure. In the Other Place it was a decaying wreck, dark water running down the hole-filled walls. The Other Little Tokyo had a thick smog of depression veiling it, so very little watery sunlight crept through from the Other Place's dim sun. Yes, this was the right building, and I was looking for room 306.

I shuddered as I picked my way up the damp stairwell. There were just too many people packed in here. Far, far too many people. All the apartments – which probably hadn't been big when they'd been built – had been subdivided and new doors put in. The noise of another train outside made the windows shake. I could smell fried food and hear the sizzle of someone cooking in a hot pan. There were babies wailing and adults shouting and a rhythmic pounding against a wall. How did you live around so many people with so much noise and so little space for yourself? I'd go mad if I couldn't escape.

But even compared to everywhere else, Room 306 was not a happy room. It looked just the same as the others, but the Other Place area around the front door was caked with filth and dried blood. The muck crunched under my feet like stepping on broken glass. It spread out from the door like tentacles painted on the wall. The smell was awful.

I knocked. There was no answer. I tried again. Still no answer. Either they were out, or they didn't want to talk to a cop.

I had a new trick that would let me to check, though. Taking off my aviators, I exhaled directly onto them. Something tried to form, but the reflective surface dragged it in and trapped it, flattening it into an image of the Other Place. Mirrors helped me use the senses of my creatures without being overwhelmed by them. Instead of experiencing it myself, it was like watching it through a television. No one else seemed to be able to notice the images – no one apart from Kirsty, that is, but she didn't seem to see it properly. She just saw fire and smoke.

With the aviators back on, I could see one of the deeper layers of the Other Place. Everything was flat and grey. Dark water trickled down the inside of the glasses, like raindrops on a windscreen. The walls didn't seem to really exist, except as a shading in the air. Looking down, it felt like I was standing on mid-air. Instead, I saw swirling, twisting distortions. They were people. I was seeing them through walls. Every person was a blot on the grey place, like a lead ball on a rubber sheet. Rather than being gravity, though, these distortions were how people scarred the Other Place.

There wasn't anyone in the apartment. No people, at least. But there was a strange presence in there. I wasn't sure what it was. I tried to put words to what I could see through the purloined senses of my creatures. Whatever it was, it wasn't human. But it looked sort of human. Just… less. Less in every way. A baby? No, somehow I didn't think that. It was too… too _flat _to be a baby.

I pinched my brow. And if it was a baby, then it was in the house on its own. I should at least check on it.

Looking around, I made sure that there was no one nearby. Good. The coast was clear. I breathed out a cherub and stuck my hand through the tear in space it opened for me, unfastening the bolt from the inside. I was in.

I wasn't sure I wanted to be in. The walls were thick with grime and dried blood. The floor was indescribable. Everything that the outside had only implied was obvious here. I shed the Other Place as fast as I could, and closed the door behind me.

They'd cut one apartment in half to make this place and the adjoining residence, and it hadn't been a big apartment to start with. The main room probably hadn't started as a bedroom, but someone had hung up what looked like a shower curtain to split the room into two for a little bit of privacy. There were two mattresses on the floor. If this place wasn't a dump, I might have believed it was a cultural thing to be sleeping on the floor. My foot knocked against an empty beer bottle. The room smelled of male sweat and body spray and cigarette smoke and alcohol. The walls were a greasy yellow. So were the pinned up photos.

And there was an even more unpleasant undertone to the air. I sniffed, and realized that the scent of the Other Place was creeping into my nostrils even though I was in the real world. Blood. Shit. Rot. The smells scraped unnaturally across my tongue.

This wasn't a good place. It wasn't a good place at all, not if the Other Place was… somehow spilling over. I'd seen nicer homes there, places that were just damp instead of stinking, dull instead of filthy. This was a real place, where people – someone who went to my school! – actually lived. All the time.

I might have been keeping Phobia chained, but that just meant that there was an unpleasant, hollow apprehension where I was sure my fear should have been. It gnawed in my gut and whispered in my ear. All the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end and my scars were aching.

And I was getting angry. I was getting angry because people had to live like this. I was angry at the world. Anger was good. It was better than the numb hollowness left where my fear should be.

A small collection of papers were scattered in and around the beer bottles lying on the room's small table. I nudged the bottles out of the way with my gloved hands, and took a look. The one on the top was a beer-stained police form letter, dated three days ago. It was a list of instructions to follow if anyone in the household saw 'Luke Okada', and the name was filled-in with pen. The cops had already been here, but they hadn't found the suspect. I rummaged through the rest of the papers. Bills, lottery tickets, and things in Japanese I couldn't read.

Leaning forwards, I sniffed. The smells of the Other Place were stronger here, deeper into the room. Was it emanating from the police note?

All things considered, I really didn't want to look. If there was one thing that the Other Place did very well, it was hammer home human misery – and God, I felt I'd already seen enough here.

But I could smell it. I could smell the Other Place creeping into the world. And a nagging worry was creeping in the back of my skull, wondering if it might continue to intrude, all on its own. What if it started to become real, if I didn't solve whatever was happening here? What if it just never let me go?

I took a deep breath, and sank down to read that note again. What secrets was it hiding?

_MATT 10:21_  
_thAt's wat hE fort_  
_the tenshun of tHe trateor_  
_hoW To esCAPE So Fee's ChoiS _

That was what the Other Place said. The usual gibberish, except for the bold print stamped on top:

**REPORT ON HIM**  
**INFORM**  
**OBEDIENCE**  
**LOYALTY**  
**CONTAINMENT **

The muscles under my left eye started to twitch. I could feel those words sinking in, the thick, black, oily letters sticking to my thoughts like tar. There was… there was some kind of power in this letter. I could feel it squirming into my brain, like I'd inhaled one of my constructs. It wanted me to call that number if I saw the boy I was looking for. I clamped my eyes shut, felt it wriggling in my thoughts, and _exhaled_ it. A cherub emerged, one chubby baby porcelain hand clenched on a writhing black thing, and I sent it back to my base. I couldn't deal with this right now. I could poke at it with my power later.

The pressure didn't stop, even with its source gone, so I clenched my teeth and thought of iron nails and iron wire and rust. I didn't exhale those, though. I just let them clutter up, filling my skull with stabbing pains until I couldn't see or breathe and there wasn't _space_ in my brain for anything else. I counted each second of pain, thinking iron thoughts until the squirming, burrowing pressure stopped.

I swallowed, barely tasting the air. So it wasn't just the cops. The grey men had been here. No, more than just the grey men. I was pretty sure they couldn't make something like this. It had to have been the bird woman, or someone like her.

I opened my watering eyes with a sigh of relief, and looked around. And then I yelped despite my best efforts to not make a noise.

There was a patch of black-red death-oil on the far wall. It hadn't been there a moment ago.

And then it moved. And I realised it wasn't on the far wall at all. It wasn't a patch, either. It was a figure. A sitting figure, arms wrapped around its legs, right there on one of the mattresses.

I swallowed again, and bit my lip until I tasted blood, trying not to scream. I… I… I…

It didn't seem to have seen me. Yes. And it was the presence I'd felt. The mind I'd felt.

What the _fuck_? It was something alive. Here, in the Other Place, but it wasn't from me, and it didn't have the beautiful parahuman glow. It was something totally separate. Something made of death.

I took a step closer to the hunched over shape, and the Other Place felt even colder. Was that just my imagination? I paced around it, tensed and ready in case it moved. Was it someone else's angel – someone other than me or Kirsty? Or was it something else? Death-oil stains got left where someone died, I'd worked out that much, but they'd just been splatters before now. Not something human-shaped, much less mobile.

This was how death looked in the Other Place. It remembered deaths, that was normal, but this was different. Worse. This looked like the Other Place was remembering a dead _person_. My thoughts ran around in circles. Why would the Other Place remember someone like this? What did it mean if it did?

"What are you?" I mouthed. I nearly reached out to touch it, but I stopped myself. Touching death couldn't be healthy.

It was almost like a ghost, I decided. A memory of a dead person that this room remembered. Trust the Other Place to find a way to shock me. So did this mean that Luke Okuda was the killer? This could be the… the memory of the dead boy from school, burned into the Other Place at his killer's home.

I started back when the memory rose to its feet. The proportions weren't quite right. Its neck was too thin, its arms too long. Or at least that was what I thought. It was hard to tell. Features became blurred when it was all just slick swirling black-red. Shambling, stumbling, it made its way across the room and stepped right through a door I hadn't noticed before.

Blinking, I shed the Other Place. Yes, that actually was a real door, not some weirdly mundane Other Place symbolism. I just hadn't paid attention to it, because it had been on the other side of the curtain sub-dividing the room. I'd been more occupied by the smell of the Other Place intruding on the room, the rot and the blood and the shit and the filth.

It seemed like it got stronger as I stepped toward the door, actually. I'd thought it had been the Other Place, but… no. Oh no.

Hand shaking, taking shallow breaths through my mouth, I reached out. The door creaked as I eased it open.

Bloodshot eyes stared back, bulging in a pale green and puffy face, dried blood drooling from the mouth, white electrical cables wound tight around its neck. The smell hit me like a rock between the eyes.

I didn't want to look. Not at the livid purple hands and feet. Not at the brown stains on the ground. I wanted to turn away, to see anything but the sad shape hanging there in the utility room. I kept on staring, taking in every little detail. I couldn't look away. My body refused to move. I should be scared, and I wasn't, and that was all my fault.

Nausea took over from the missing fear and I sagged down, collapsing to my knees, wrestling for control of my stomach. I couldn't let myself be sick. Not here. Even though I'd got a mouthful of the corpse-rot and I hadn't felt this bad since the locker and-

I opened my mouth and coughed out my Nausea, forcing her out in chunks even as I was still sinking into the Other Place. She pooled beside me, congealing into something like a naked version of me, covered in floor-length hair matted with blood and grease and dead bugs and worse.

Wiping my mouth on my sleeve, stomach stilled, I glared at her. She stared back, smiling with a mouth full of rotten, oozing teeth. Her too-long tongue rolled out of her mouth, crawling along the ground towards me like a slug.

"No," I growled, exhaling coils of tangled barbed wire that ensnared her hands and wrists. She screamed, a wet, gargling, putrid sound. I didn't let up. Not until I had the barbed wire around her throat. Not until she was the one kneeling.

That stopped me throwing up. That was the only thing that stopped me throwing up. I couldn't feel fear, I couldn't feel sickness, and in the hollow place left by their absence, there was only a dull, muted horror. God. Oh God. I shed the Other Place as quickly as I could and leaned up against the wall, arms wrapped around myself. I thought I could hear the electrical cables creak.

I was in here with a dead body. Someone who'd hung himself. He wasn't fresh, not looking like that. Not _smelling _like that. The colours were all wrong. The face was pale and vaguely green, while the hands and feet were the colour of rotten plums. The features bulged. And… and there were scratches on his neck. I could see dried blood on the white cables, so maybe he'd realised he didn't want to do it, and he'd struggled, trying to get free, but it was too late, the cords were too tight, he'd choked to death and…

… and he'd died so horribly that it had scarred the Other Place. Worse than other deaths. So bad there was an oozing shape of death-oil that had mutely stumbled in and out of this room. The room where he'd died.

I thought I recognised the man. He wasn't Luke Okada. He was too old and too overweight. But he was in some of the pictures outside. His father.

My breaths came fast and shallow. I'd chained my fear, I'd forced down my sickness, but… I still couldn't handle this. The cold, clinical seeping horror was a lead weight in my stomach. I hadn't expected a body! I just wanted to find the killer at school! I wanted answers! I wanted to bring them to justice! What was I supposed to do now, with a dead body hanging in front of me, in someone else's house? Crap. Crap.

Well, it was too late for Mr Okada. I couldn't do anything for him now, except make sure that someone found him. He could get a proper burial, at least.

Now that I knew the grey men had been here – and were handing out some kind of brainwashing letters – I had even more worries nagging at me. I didn't know if this guy's son was the killer, not yet. I just knew I didn't want the grey men getting their hands on him. Would the father have done this to himself if he hadn't been given that note, fighting with the urge to hand over his son?

No, I had to find 'Luke' before they did, and I knew where to start. I could do things with memories, and there was a memory right here, burned into the Other Place, shambling back and forth. I'd only done it once before, with Kirsty, but it should work. After all, I'd been able to feel the thing's mind, outside of the apartment. There had to be something there I could use. Some memory in the Other Place.

I turned towards the death-oil figure, and exhaled an angel. It didn't have eyes, but I was sure it was staring at me. Did I really want to do this?

Hands jammed into my pockets, I paced up and down, trying to psyche myself up. Mud and blood squelched under my feet. What worried me was the feedback, the contamination I'd felt with Kirsty. I needed to remember who I was. I couldn't become anything like the body next to me, dangling and stinking. I didn't want to kill myself. I'd never wanted that, and if I found myself thinking I did, they weren't my thoughts. It was just like the locker. Everyone said I'd gone crazy and tried to kill myself in there, but they were wrong, and they didn't know what they were talking about. That wasn't me. I was fine.

The barbed-wire angel hissed at me from beside the hanging corpse, an impatient rasp of breath behind its gas mask. "I'm fine!" I snapped back.

I didn't care what it thought, anyway. I just needed it to do what I said. On command, it grabbed the oily shadow, clawed hands latching around its wavering arm. It didn't seem to respond, but at least it wouldn't be escaping.

Exhaling onto my gloved hands like I was trying to warm them, I gathered up a squirming ball of Other Place material in one palm. And then I pressed it to the oily surface of the strange creature, and spoke. "Tell me… about your son."

The echo twisted under my hand, writhing like I'd held its skin to an open flame. It started screaming a high shrill noise which made my teeth buzz, and then black vapour began to rise off it, creeping into my mouth until-

It was tight around my throat and my vision was growing dim and I was thrashing against the cables around my legs but I'd done a too good job of it. I could just about lift up a little bit on the wall to gasp out a breath but it took all my strength and the cables were getting tighter and tighter and this had been a mistake such a mistake and I had to get my fingers under the cables but I couldn't and this was so much worse than I thought it was going to be and I needed to breathe and I'd wanted to die but not like this and… and… and…

\- I let go. Of the cord, of the memory, of the creature, and gasped for breath, massaging my neck. No. That wasn't it. Couldn't let it show me that. My throat felt like it was bruised, all tender and raw and aching. I had to make it show me something else.

I exhaled again, rasping a little, and reached out.

"No," I wheezed. "Tell me- Tell me about your son. What's his real name?" This time the angel tightened its grasp.

But my hand didn't get there. The echo spoke, in a gasping, choked voice. "Matsuda. Ryo," it said.

"Good," I said, and swallowed, tasting cold blood. So, he hadn't just changed his first name to fit in. Neither of his names were the same. That probably made them illegal immigrants, here with false papers. "Now. Matsuda. Where is he now? Where was the last time you saw him? Are you going to speak?"

"I. No more."

"I need to find him," I said. "You can help me, or I'll take it from you. I'm going to find out."

"No. More," it said.

"Hold him," I ordered the angel, and squared my jaw. The memory-creature twisted in the angel's clawed grasp, trying to escape. Squirming and thrashing, it leaned away from my hand. But I reached out and touched it and-

Ryo screamed at me. I screamed back. He was crying and I didn't understand what was going on. There was still blood in his hair, and it wasn't his, thank goodness, not like last time, but who did it belong to? He was cramming clothes into a bag. The things he'd been wearing were heaped on the floor, painted crimson. I begged with him, pleaded with him, ordered him. Nothing changed his mind. As he left, he slammed the door and plaster fell from the ceiling as the hinges bounced.

I went down to the laundrette, his clothes bundled up with mine. The blood haunted me every step of the way. I whispered and muttered to myself as I dumped the bloody clothing in a washing machine. I poured bleach into the drum, rather than cleaning fluid. I knew it should destroy the evidence. No one noticed me. I was sure of it. I staggered back home, weeping, and stopped at a liquor store. I sat in my shitty apartment with the peeling walls and rotting ceiling and the rising damp, and drank and drank.

-there it was. I let go and stepped back, head reeling. I could feel tears welling up. Nothing was worth a damn. Everything good, everything I'd planned, everything I'd _hoped _about America was just a lie.

Angrily, I took off my aviators and rubbed my eyes. Those _weren't _my feelings. I couldn't let myself get lost in those external thoughts. Not here, not with a dead body in the next room. The body of a man who'd… who'd helped cover up his son's bloody clothes, and then sat here getting drunk. He'd lived long enough for the cops to check this place out three days ago, to hand over the power-laced pamphlet. And then, at some point since then, he'd hung himself in the utility closet that served as the kitchen in his cramped, stinking apartment.

Scowling, I stomped over to one of the mattresses, the one which clearly belonged to a young man. The cans of Axe were a clue. There were some hairs on the pillow, and I picked them out. The oily silhouette watched me, limp in my angel's grip.

"Let it go," I ordered as I stomped out, "and follow me." I managed to make it all the way out the door, then staggered down the stairs and outside before I collapsed, shaking in the open air. My head felt like it was brimming with the gunk of the Other Place, runoff from that phantom, and my arms felt puffy and hot with scars. I had been using my powers too much in there.

I'd never seen a dead body before. Not up close like that. Even down in the Docks, I'd only seen bodybags.

The noise of the city surrounded me, and the secondhand sunlight streaming between the ill-maintained buildings helped wash away the unnatural chill. Even with all its fumes, the air smelt fresher than anything I'd ever breathed. I sat there for a good quarter of an hour. I told myself I was thinking things over, getting my strength back. I knew I was just trying to put off what I'd need to do next.

Luke Okuda – Matsuda Ryo – was out there. He was the killer for sure, and he was on the run. Was he willing to kill again? Maybe. I didn't know why he'd done it in the first place. Even his father hadn't, and he was dead now. There wasn't any sign of a woman in that apartment; his mother was dead, or gone. I was going to be seeing that place again in my nightmares, I just knew it. Cry Baby would be put to work keeping me awake, if that was what it took to avoid going back in my dreams.

I exhaled, and Sniffer took form beside me. Her looming long-limbed bulk towered over me. "Here," I told Sniffer, offering her the hairs I'd found. "Find me Matsuda Ryo."

She leaned down over me, too-large nostrils flared. Living up to her name, she sniffed at my hand. Silently, she nodded.

"You know where he is? Just from that?"

Another nod.

"Where?"

Licking one finger, she marked damp letters on one of the decaying walls of the apartment block exterior.

BOSTON

"Boston," I repeated. He'd clearly made a run for it, heading south. Maybe hitchhiking, maybe on a transit bus. I guessed that if you wanted to hide out somewhere, Boston was a good place for that. Half the city was still abandoned and irradiated. The Behemoth attacked the place when I was about eight. Dad said that he'd heard the noise of MIT and its tinkertech labs detonating from here in Maine, but I didn't remember that.

I exhaled Watcher Doll. "Go and find him." I told the camera-headed cherub. "Follow Sniffer, and show me where he is."

I plucked off my aviators as it vanished, peering into their reflective lenses to see what Watcher Doll saw. Matsuda was hunched over a plastic table, wrapped up in a hoodie and thick layers of warm clothes. It looked like he was serious about making a run for it. If the half-eaten Big Mac was a clue, he was in a McDonalds. He didn't look like he was in much distress. Then again, Big Macs aren't _that_ terrible.

I must be getting nervous, if I was making awful jokes to myself. Had Phobia freed herself already?

Cupping my hands over my mouth, I tried not to hyperventilate. I knew what I had to do, even if I didn't want to do it. I had to find Luke – Matsuda, whatever – before the cops did. Or before he got away. I needed to know… why he'd done it, and whether he'd even meant to. How his power worked, and what it looked like in the Other Place. Why the grey men were after him, and what he knew about them. I needed to know if he was really a criminal, or if it was just an accident.

I knew all that. I was just scared, almost too scared to move.

So I took a deep breath, and released Phobia for the second time that day. As I bound her up in razor wire, I felt my mind clear. It was obvious what I should do next. And without fear, I had anger - and I was angry at the government grey men who cared more about their investigations than the people living here. They'd seen this place, seen these living conditions. They were federals, but had they cared? No. They'd used their powers on the father. It'd probably been what had pushed him over the edge.

Well, in that case, fuck the grey men. Why did they want Matsuda Ryo? I was going to find out the truth here, the one they were trying to hide.

I had his hair. I had his name. I could find him, no matter where he went. I hunched my shoulders.

It was time to see if my Spinner Hag could open a corridor to Boston.


End file.
